‘Devastated’ Coogee shark attack survivor says skin graft has failed

A mother who survived a horror shark attack at Sydney’s Coogee Beach says an attempted skin graft on her seriously injured leg has failed.

Leah Stewart, 35, had to have her left arm amputated and suffered serious injuries to her left leg when she was attacked by a great white shark in June, only surviving due to the quick actions of bystanders and paramedics.

As part of her recovery, doctors attempted a skin graft, where they took skin from her uninjured right leg to help her badly injured left leg heal.

However, in a post to social media on Tuesday, she admitted the effort had not been successful.

“Unfortunately, this is not the post I was wanting to do, but I had my graft checked yesterday and it was confirmed that it failed,” she said in a video on Instagram.

“[I’m] feeling pretty devastated, had quite a few tears, and now we’re not really sure where to go from here.”

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Stewart said she was keen to “keep moving forward” despite the setback and said she was having a break from the vac machine, a device that is used to help large wounds heal.

Stewart said this allowed her more freedom of movement and she revealed the scars from her skin graft surgery publicly for the first time.

She showed three large scars and bruises on the side of her right leg, which is where the doctors took skin from in the attempted graft.

She said its “still pretty raw” but added that it is healing well.

Stewart previously shared her account of the shark attack in an exclusive interview with 60 Minutes, where she revealed that vowed to survive so she could be there for her daughter, August.

“I’m the woman that punched the shark in the face,” she said in the interview, which aired last month.

“I’m the woman that fought like hell to be here, to be here for August, and it was the hardest thing in the world, but I fought my way out of there.

She described the shark as an “ugly f---er” and remembers exactly how it looked.

“I’ll never forget its face. It was huge and its teeth and its mouth was massive and its eyes, it’s just black little beady eyes, we were just looking face to face.

“And it got to the point where it was about 30 centimetres from my face.”