A Survival Story: Charlie Buhl, attacked in Cancun, Mexico by a crocodile on June 18, 2021.

Written Sept 21, 2021.

Written by Jennifer Buhl, Charlie’s mom.

Image galleries, below story.

My brother Jeff tells me that he gets up around 6 or 7 a.m. and starts his day kneeling in prayer in his home office in Hong Kong. We aren’t particularly close, chat maybe twice a year on birthdays, but on Friday, June 18, 2021 right when he began his prayer, we popped into his head. He said he had the thought to pray for our safety in Mexico. I didn’t even know Jeff knew we were in Mexico; he must have heard it through the family grapevine. He dismissed the thought as banal, but the urgency came again, and it was oddly specific: “Pray for Johnny, Charlie and Jenny’s safety in Mexico.” So he did. That was at about 5 or 6 p.m. our time, about 3 hours before the attack. The heavens were gearing up for our terror.

We’d been at Club Med for just over a week, so the three of us had many friends. Club Med is different from most resorts in that everything they do encourages meeting and mingling amongst the guests and the resort’s activity guides, whom they call “G.O.s.”

In the early evening, I connected with the boys by the pool, then Johnny and I went to shower and change for dinner. Charlie stayed with his friends from Kids Club/Teen Club. He’d eat with them, then as usual we would hook back up at around 9:15 p.m. for the nightly show on the pool deck. Johnny went with me to dinner. We ate with Maria, a Brazilian girl living in London traveling alone who I’d just met at the pool that day. A couple of G.O.s also joined us.

It was around 8:30 p.m. when we sat down at the main restaurant, which overlooked the pool deck and was situated above Bodega, a specialty bar & restaurant. At around 8:45 p.m., Johnny left with one of his friends to go to his Kids Club performance downstairs by the pool deck. Maria and I went for the Friday night chocolate fondue fountain desert. When we sat back down and before I had a bite, it began.

Louis, a Brazilian boy who I knew as Charlie’s friend from Kids Club, and his dad, who I also recognized, approached our table. The dad said something like, “Jennifer, I believe your son has been attacked by a crocodile.” The horror in that moment and over the next twenty seconds continues to haunt me. I was described later and felt like at the time a bull in a China shop, plowing through the restaurant toppling people in my path, down the stairs to Marc, a South African man who I would meet later and was one of the first on the scene, pointing my way like a traffic cop. Marc’s wife, Candice, had realized Charlie’s parents were not there and had sent her husband and son to look for me.

During my run through the restaurant, down the stairs and across the pool deck towards one of my sons, which one I had no idea, my mind was methodically posing questions: “Which boy? Which boy do I want it to be? What will I do if he’s dead? Will I kill myself? What about my other son? How does one go on after a child’s death? Will he be alive or is he already dead? Will he be there or did the crocodile take him away?"

I never answered any of these questions. I saw a crowd of people, then saw Charlie lying in the middle. He was on the pool deck next to the lagoon stairs, bare chested and crying. I dove on him and covered his body with mine. I remember being comforted that he was still warm.

I immediately began crying out to God. Pleading "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, please. Jesus, you are the healer. God, please." I talked to Charlie, and he began to cry harder. "It hurts so bad!" he was saying. I made him speak the name of Jesus as I held him. It was hard for him to speak through the pain.

I stopped praying to yell, "Where is the ambulance? Call it again!," and I glanced briefly at his leg. It appeared to have a missing piece, like a shark bit off a chunk. A woman was down at his leg. Adrian was her name I found out later, and she said something like, “Jennifer, I need you to hear me. I am a nurse. He’s going to be OK. It’s superficial.” I took this to mean that he wouldn't bleed out, which was comforting, but for how long would that be the case and where was the ambulance, I kept thinking.

I looked up, “Where’s Johnny? Where’s Johnny? Find Johnny!” Someone went to get him, and they returned quickly. I remember a group of people occupying him nearby. He looked content. He told me later that Maria found him and said, “Your brother has a boo-boo.” (The three of us laugh about this each time he tells us.) Someone looked at me and asked, "Are you sure [you want him to come over]?" I nodded yes. I instinctively knew that Johnny needed to see his brother. He came over and began sobbing, put his arms around Charlie and cried, “Charlie, I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.” He kept repeating this over and over. This also keeps haunting me. I didn’t know how to respond. I knew what he meant: “Charlie, are you dying? If you die, when you die, I will miss you.” I kept repeating, "Charlie is here. We will pray." I told both boys to speak the name of Jesus, something I have always taught them to do when they are in trouble. There is power in a name, and in particular that name. I remember Johnny’s precious 6-year-old voice sobbing, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” through his tears. Charlie repeated it through his clenched teeth. It was all I could do, and I knew it was all that mattered right then. At that point, I didn't know what had happened other than a crocodile had bitten Charlie, and I didn’t need to know anything else.

There was a woman beside me who I heard agreeing with my prayers. It was Candice, Marc’s wife. Candice was the first to hear Charlie’s screams and recognize them as “off.” She was holding Charlie’s hand and talking to him in her comforting, strong, motherly South African accent. Her son, Connor, who was celebrating his 23rd birthday that night, was at Charlie’s other side saying, “You're doing so good, Charlie. You’re strong. You’re brave. You’re a legend.” (Charlie remembered the “legend” line.) I asked Candice if she’d pray with me and immediately she broke into prayer. I knew that I had a believer next to me, and it was comforting. At some point, I asked if everyone would pray with me. Someone began the Lord’s Prayer and at least a dozen of us prayed it together. I remember repeating several times: “Deliver us from evil. Deliver HIM from evil. Deliver CHARLIE from evil.”

The prayer accounts will emerge as a constant theme over the next several days and weeks. I believe that well over a thousand humans from all over the world uttered pleas to God on Charlie’s behalf. And by all who witnessed, all who researched the stats, by all accounts, his survival alone is a miracle.

Finally, the ambulance arrived. Adrian, who was not just a nurse but was a trauma nurse who had spent the last 3 years training EMTs in the field, gave the parametric one attempt to put on the tourniquet, then did it for her.

We walked a long way across the pool deck, through the bar, the theater, the lobby and out the front door… to blackness. I remember going ballistic and screaming, "Where is the ambulance?" and others echoed me. We walked down the drive a minute or two until we saw it parked with its lights off in the darkness. Maybe this is protocol for the private ambulances, the ones that the hotels apparently call. They don’t want their sirens to alarm the guests. I found out later that the Cancun hotels don’t call 911. Maybe this is also why it took so long, almost 30 minutes, but I don’t know that either, and maybe 30 minutes was faster than 911 would have been. We will never know. I will also realize later that we had walked the long way out of the hotel to the ambulance, versus the short way which would have disrupted the nightly performance. The longer route cost us a few minutes. This was one of the many things that angered the guests, including Candice’s family, who have continued to stay by my side in encouragement throughout the summer.

The EMT was not going to let Johnny in the ambulance with me, but I screamed and everyone else backed me up. Candice’s son, Connor, hoisted him to me. Connor had been carrying him “like a koala cub” per Candice’s account.

The ride to the hospital took about 20 minutes, so it was about an hour after the attack that we arrived in the “shock room.” They wouldn’t let me stay, but I planted Johnny and myself on the floor right by the waiting room glass door where I could watch staff go in and out and hear my boy’s blood curdling screams. Johnny and I kept praying with arms and hands outstretched towards his room.

Monse introduced herself as the Club Med point person who would be translating and helping me with anything I needed. She would become a good friend. Monse kept Johnny when I was called back to see the ER doctor. The doctor’s English was not great but she clearly said, “His leg is crushed, and he will likely lose a limb.” Her tone was very distressed.

This was the first I'd heard of a loss of leg, and it was devastating but I remember thinking, "Just save his life and we can deal with a ‘robot leg’,” as Johnny affectionately calls them. He thinks they’re cool. I was allowed back into the shock room with Charlie, and he was awake and not in pain any more. I laid hands on him, all over him, especially on his heart and head and leg. I had taken Johnny’s crystal necklace off him which he’d gotten from a Mexican vendor and laid that on him, as well as my beaded bracelet. I believe in the power of the human touch and the energy from the earth and everything in it. I spoke over his body from my spirit in tongues, which I never do publicity and which I had also done at the pool and in the ambulance. I don’t understand what I say when I’m speaking in tongues, but it is a conscious and rational choice to pray in tongues, and I believe it to be direct communication from the Holy Spirit inside of me to God. “For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit.” - I Corinthians 14:2.

After at least an hour, a nurse came to swab Charlie’s nose for a Covid test. She told me they would not take him to surgery until that came back - an hour. I went nuts. Another nurse told me that wasn’t true. I never figured out what was the truth.

The plastic surgeon arrived, Dr. Ulises Solis. He would be the lead surgeon. I asked him if Charlie would lose his leg, and he only responded that he didn’t know anything until he started the surgery. We waited while the other surgeons arrived and prepared (and maybe for the Covid test). I was told that Charlie was stable. At 12:58 a.m. (per Charlie - he kept looking at the clock on the wall), the nurses took him to the Operating Room.

The news reports the next day - and there were many - would say Charlie lost his leg. They would also get almost all the facts of the accident completely wrong. “A boy was playing on the golf course and his parents scared the animal away,” one said. It was as if a journalist just made up random details. Apparently, reporters were hanging around the hospital that night listening for information, and they heard me tell Monse and others that he may lose his leg, so that bit wasn’t actually preposterous. I probably don’t need to tell many of you how I feel about journalism today. As someone who used to work for CNN and in tabloid news, I say like a broken record these days, do not believe the news. Do your own research. Believe your eyes and ears. The pap photos tell the most truth. When the ambulance arrived, in fact, there had been many paparazzi. About the only thing that the stories got right were the pictures they took: a video of me in my frantic state exiting the ambulance, uncovering Charlie’s face. Looking at me in that video made my friends cry. Charlie’s face was covered with a blanket when we exited the ambulance, which the EMTs had re-parked due to the paparazzi being at the hospital. When I finally figured out what was going on, why we weren’t getting out and why they were covering Charlie’s face, I remember being angry: “He needs to breathe. What does it matter if they take his picture? Let’s just GO!”

I had no phone, only a backpack which happened to have my computer. At some point, I opened it and typed out a cryptic message on Facebook saying something like, “Charlie was attacked by a crocodile in Cancun. PLEASE PRAY.” I still can’t bear to go back into my Facebook account and read that message and the comments. An hour or so later, right after surgery had started, the hospital handed me their landline phone. It was my sister, Joy. She’d begun calling Cancun hospitals looking for us. Amerimed Hospital, the private hospital where we were, was the second one she tried. She began crying, and I waited until she stopped. I was still in my head, in “fight” mode, and I don’t think I had cried yet. Joy made plans to get on the morning flight to Cancun, and my parents and other siblings would follow suit over the next several weeks.

Shortly thereafter, someone from Club Med brought me a bag of my things including my phone. I vaguely remember talking to my dad and stepmom and to my brother Jeff later in the night. Monse told me that I talked to Adrian four times, but I have just a feint memory of this. I clearly remember texting Becky, the only person from my church in Philly whose phone number I had. It was around 3 a.m. and she replied immediately and began praying in intercession for Charlie. She shared many verses with me. I remember looking up “God the Healer” on my iPhone and the Hebrew “Jehovah-Rapha” came up, a name which I spoke many times that night and over the next few weeks. It means “the God who heals.” It dawned on me to ask Becky a few weeks later why she was up. She said she never wakes up in the night, but that night she woke up and was wide awake and decided to check her phone.

The Club Med folks who brought my phone were the same ones who rescued Charlie. At around 2 a.m., I was ready to hear the story. From their account and from talking to many over the next several days, I pieced together what had happened.

The attack:

Charlie was with Kids Club/ Teen Club, a group of about a dozen 10-13 year olds (that week at least) who, under the care of two G.O.s, Karen and Julio, enjoyed all the activities Club Med had to offer - trapeze, sailing, snorkeling, etc. - as well as played games, hung out and ate together. At that age, they could come and go as they pleased, but by week’s end they mostly stayed together as their group had really bonded. I saw Charlie less and less as he spent most of his time with them.

On June 18th at around 8:45 p.m., after dinner and before the show, the Kids Club had organized a game of hide-and-seek. They’d played a few rounds, then Charlie and his best bud Cyrus, age 13, hid together on the stairs leading from the pool deck down to the lagoon. People used these stairs to board boats for excursions during the day. A short metal railing, maybe 3 feet high, blocked the pool deck from the lagoon, and a small gate which swung open and closed, led to the stairs. The gate, according to both Cyrus and Charlie, was open. There was no lock anyway, only a pin to fasten it. No warning signs were posted.

According to both Cyrus and Charlie's accounts, they sat on the middle step, their legs on the step below with their feet not hanging over the water. Both of them were aware crocodiles lived in the lagoon. We’d seen several of them, and I’d even warned my boys on our first day: “Never go into the lagoon at night,” I’d said. I’d heard a rumor that a Cancun hotel guest had done that a few years prior and had been killed by a crocodile. I don’t know if this was true, but I’d told the boys about it, and it alarmed them. Charlie is a very risk averse kid, and I never doubted that he would respect that warning. But what none of us knew was that crocs can and will jump up out of the water and grab you and drag you in.

A hose was running, coiled next to the stairs. Cryus took it and sprayed some fellow hide-and-seekers walking by on the pool deck. “Suddenly,” Cyrus said, “Charlie wasn’t sitting next to me anymore. I looked and saw him in the water and thought he’d fallen in.” A young girl passed who was playing hide-and-seek with them. Charlie remembers looking at her saying, “Please help me.” “She left,” Charlie says, “probably to go get help.” Cyrus says he grabbed Charlie’s arm: “I tried to pull him back up, but then I realized something was pulling at him.” Charlie remembers holding onto the stairs with his hands and trying to boost himself out of the water. Charlie was screaming, “It hurts! Please help me!” and Cyrus was screaming, too. The crocodile yanked and took Charlie under. Cyrus remembers Charlie struggling to get up after this, and Charlie remembers trying to grab hold of the stairs again. Cyrus grabbed onto his arm once more, and again the boys screamed for help. Cyrus said it felt like thirty-seconds until the men arrived and told him to get back.

Candice, Marc, and their three boys (late teens/early 20s) were the only group of guests seated at Bodega, the restaurant below the main dining room. Bodega juts out over the lagoon. The only other people dining at Bodega that night were three G.O.s: Ragab, the acting "Chef de Village" (GM) that week; Juanito, the Head of Sports; and Ismael, the tennis coach. I knew them all but had spent the most time with Ismael and knew him best.

Candice was up first. She knew the voices weren’t right. They were not the voices of playing kids she would tell me; something was wrong. She and Connor, 23, began to run; her husband and their other two boys followed. "Save me, save me,” Marc recalls Charlie screaming as they arrived. The three G.O.s got up and ran too, along with Andre, the sommelier who worked at Bodega. I think it would have taken them 10 seconds to cross the pool deck to the stairs. Ismael said that when they arrived, they didn’t see Charlie. He resurfaced, and Andre grabbed him and held him tight with one hand, and with his other hand held the rail. The three G.O.s beat the crocodile with their feet and fists. Andre explained to me at the hospital that night that he would “give a little” as the crocodile yanked (as you would if you were fishing) in case the crocodile would rip off his leg. Sometime after the attack, Andre discovered that his finger broke during the battle, something he didn’t feel at the time. Andre said he kept eyes with Charlie the entire time and talked to him: “Hold on. Don’t let go.” Andre told me several times, “Your son is mentally and physically very strong.”

Marc estimated the fight went on for five minutes. “Could have been three, felt like ten, so I think five.” Connor, 23, was holding two men who were holding Charlie's arms and he said muscle fatigue set in. (Connor works out daily and is fully muscles.) Marc recalled that at one point the croc yanked back and forth and the men lost their grip and Charlie went under. “I thought he was gone.” No way could adults have won against the croc when it decided to pull, Marc said. Charlie recalled looking back in its eyes, which were staring back at him. He says they were unflinching even as they were stomped on by the shoes of the men. They all talked about the hollow sound one pair of dress shoes made when it was banging on the head. Eventually someone grabbed a blue pool pillow and covered the croc’s eyes, which they also poked. Marc thinks this was what finally got it to release its jaws for the spit second when they were able to pull Charlie out.

He was pulled on the pool deck, and Juanito ripped a T-shirt, got a belt and made a makeshift tourniquet in an attempt to stop the bleeding. During the fight, Candice had gone running back toward the resort and yelled for someone to “call the paramedics. A crocodile has got a child.” She returned as they pulled Charlie out, and she and her son Connor got on their knees on either side of Charlie, talking to him and holding his hands. By one account, “The blond boy [Connor] was at Charlie’s side the whole time giving him words of encouragement. He was right up by Charlie's head… saying, 'You're doing so good, Charlie. Hang in there, Charlie. You are so brave and so strong'.” After the attack, Charlie remembered Connor most clearly. In fact, Charlie doesn’t seem to have forgotten anything.

Several guests who were at the pool heard the fight. One woman, Mary, was there when Charlie was pulled out of the water, and per her account yelled, “Is anyone a doctor?” When no one responded, she ran back to the pool to get her phone and call her sister, Adrian, the trauma nurse. That call was made at 8:57 p.m. and Adrian picked up immediately, came running and arrived within 1 or 2 minutes. She was nearby. She looked and saw the crocodile over the railing, and recounts, “it was huge and had a blue pillow in its mouth.” Adrian took control of the situation: she pushed an artery in Charlie’s upper leg with her thumb to stop the bleeding; removed the makeshift tourniquet which she determined wasn’t doing any good; then scanned his entire body for wounds. Candice describes Adrian as “the biggest gift and the lifesaver of the night: so calm and precise and logical and unemotional and just focused on doing what she needed to do.” Adrian stayed at Charlie’s leg and was there when I arrived. Mary also noted the time when the EMS arrived and they had him on the gurney: 9:25 p.m., as Adrian had yelled, “Call the time!”

At around the same time in Hong Kong, my brother, Jeff, stopped in his tracks with an overwhelming thought: “One of your children is dead/dying.” Jeff and his wife and their two kids were walking across a bridge on the way to a birthday party that morning, and he had to speak audibly to shake off the thought: “No, they are not. They are with me.”

Cyrus’s mother, Lara, would later tell me that the hotel barricaded off the pool deck and wouldn’t let guests pass to our huddle. Lara, Lara’s husband, Cyrus and his sister stood on the edge of the barricade, bunched together as a family and prayed. After returning home, Lara has stayed in constant contact with me. She and her family have continued to pray for Charlie, and Lara shared with me a video of the traditional Jewish prayer of healing, the Mi Shebeirach, which she prayed at her synagogue. She also told me that Cyrus had been taking gymnastics for months before they came to Mexico, and that he was specifically working on his grip strength. By another guest’s account, Lina, there were “at least 100 people standing and praying that night.” Lina’s son, Oren, was also in Kids Club with Charlie. She shared with me this story later: “I had a terrible nightmare about a week prior of a blond boy, Oren’s age, being taken by a crocodile in the middle of the blue Cancun water. I woke up in a cold sweat. While in Cancun I kept watching Oren as he swam with Ben [his dad] in the ocean, constantly nervous. That night, when the attack occurred, I understood that the boy I saw in my nightmare was Charlie, who I would soon meet at Club Med.”

The gate did get locked. Candice had to yell several times, “Somebody put a lock on this gate!” Charlie remembers this, too. He said people were saying, “I see the crocodile. Somebody get a lock!” Mary Google-translated, yelled it in Spanish, and finally someone came with a padlock. Candice said the crocodile was sitting in the water at the bottom of the stairs, as Adrian had noted, and they were afraid it would come up and grab them. Marc (Candice's husband) also returned to the scene at around 1 a.m. and took videos of the crocodile still swimming at the bottom of the stairs looking for Charlie. Marc was also sure to record that there were no warning signs and no lights along the rail. No one seemed to have understood the danger.

This was hard for us to believe. That night and the next day, the guests were furious. It could have been them or their child, and I know many of their hearts were wrenched for mine. Maria (of the boo-boo comment ;) told me later that she and a friend had swum in the lagoon the night before: “I figured it was safe,” she said. “They water ski in it.” Marc emailed the CEO of Club Med that night, who responded. The following day the pool was closed and Club Med’s management team from Miami flew in. Along with government officials, they spent the day scanning the resort. The Cancun Chef de Village (GM) returned from his vacation immediately. He told me later that Club Med Cancun was putting $200,000 into securing the resort and that the water skiing, which happened daily in the lagoon, was being immediately and permanently halted. Signs were put up and a security guard was stationed on the pool deck by the lagoon 24/7.

But as of July 14th when we left Cancun, the resort was still not warning guests upon their arrival, and THAT crocodile - as well many others - were still swimming around the Club Med portion of the lagoon. Mexican law (at the moment) prohibits the removal of crocodiles from the Nichupte lagoon, which spans from one side of Cancun to the other bordering the hotel zone. I know much about the crocodile lagoon situation now. The crocs are protected; many people will say overprotected and in massive abundance, but a census has not been done in years. I will later discover that crocodiles nest in the dry space under the Club Med pool, something that Club Med knew. The stairs that Charlie and Cyrus were sitting on nudge up to the opening under the pool, a few feet from the nesting area. After the attack, I also observed large 3 to 4 meter ones, like the size that attacked Charlie, circling the area all day and night, and discovered that they are, in fact, well known by the staff to jump at Bodega patrons who sit behind glass overlooking the lagoon in an attempt to snatch them. The glass is even cracked from one hit. People say scraps of food are thrown their way, and Marc talks about the Bodega staff who “showed off” their croc “friend” Patricia, who they fed. Marc snapped a picture of the stick that the staff kept handy when Patricia got too close. There was also a social media post from 6 months prior talking about the well-fed Patricia. And so, especially at dark, 8:30ish each night, you are almost guaranteed to see one or more. A few weeks after Charlie’s attack, a giant one, perhaps the same beast who took him, jumped several feet out of the water at my sister, Julie, while she sat with a drink at Bodega. Julie sailed across the table and into my lap as it snapped its jaws and knocked its head on the glass in an attempt to grab her.

Crocodiles are known to attack, in particular, in two situations: when guarding their nest, and when they are fed and become less fearful of humans. Both of these situations existed by the Club Med pool deck where Charlie was attacked.

I believe that something should be done. Charlie’s was the third attack in the region that month, and another occurred a few weeks later. Two attacks were on tourists (Charlie and two adult twins from the U.K.), and two were on Mexicans. My doctor treated three of the victims, all of whom survived, but if things don't change I believe that someone else - someone else’s child - will not be so lucky. And while Club Med may secure their resort, what is compelling the other hotels, restaurants and establishments across the region to do the same? No one appears to be warning tourists (or Mexicans), and by all accounts, this isn’t the same lagoon locals grew up with.

Back to that night…

By 4 a.m., the reporters and the G.O.s were gone. It was just Monse, a couple of staff, and Johnny and me in the waiting room. I sat on the floor and laid over Johnny’s sleeping body while my spirit murmured again in a voice that I could not understand. I had no energy left but tongues flowed effortlessly, like tears. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” Romans 8:26. I prayed like this for the next couple hours until around 5:30 a.m. when someone came to tell me the surgery was over and the doctors wanted to see me. Monse stayed with sleeping Johnny, and I was escorted back towards the ER and into the doctor’s lounge where I heard light-hearted laughing and bantering in Spanish, a comforting sound. I was introduced to the anesthesiologist, a woman who was dressed up as she’d been called from a party; Dr. Ortiz, a gentle and friendly pediatric surgeon who would follow Charlie’s treatment the entire time; and a few others. Dr. Solis, the plastic surgeon, had a serious but not unfriendly way, and he asked me to sit while he finished typing his notes.

When he was done, he turned to me and said in excellent English, “I’m happy with how the surgery went but there is still much we have to be concerned about.” I asked immediately, “Will he lose his leg?” Dr. Solis thought this was unlikely, then showed me a video from the surgery with Charlie’s leg stapled up. To my untrained eyes, it looked like God had put him together again. It was beautiful, and I began to cry and thank him. “Don’t thank me,” he said immediately. “Thank Him,” and he pointed to heaven. “I am a believer. Your son is a miracle.”

Dr. Solis told me Charlie received a blood transfusion during surgery and would receive another soon. Later, he estimated Charlie lost about half his blood during the attack and the surgery. He told me that of the three main arteries in the lower leg, the “branches” of one were cut but the others were miraculously not. He showed me a picture of a fully exposed piece of tissue, with two protruding arteries intact. Dr. Solis said Charlie had not lost the “chunk of flesh” that I had thought was missing, but rather it was hanging on, technically referred to as a “flap.” This flap was put back on but was of concern as muscles, vessels, skin and other tissue were cut, and they did not know whether it would recirculate properly or if the skin would die. Of all things though, they were most concerned about bacteria. “It’s not IF there is bacteria inside of Charlie. It’s what kind.” The crocodile had bit into the larger bone, the tibia, and the doctor could trace two teeth marks in the bone with his finger. (That bone didn’t actually break through, but Charlie did have a non-displaced fracture, meaning the bone was broken but did not shift, in his fibula.) A possible bone infection was their primary concern at this point, and they would start Charlie on three antibiotics then make adjustments as cultures came in. (Later cultures would show Staphylococcus and Pseudomonas bacteria, and his antibiotics would be adjusted accordingly.) They didn’t discuss future possible movement of the leg as this was not something to think ahead on yet.

The doctors would go home, sleep, then return in 12 hours for another surgery to clean the wound again and attach a wound vacuum, a machine that constantly suctions the wound ooze just as a leech would. This “surgical cleaning” -- going into the OR, removing the vac, unstabling, cleaning, culturing, restabling, reattaching the vac -- would be done every three days during our hospital stay. Each time, we waited with anxiety for the new results: “Was the bacteria gone? Did the skin survive? Was the tissue recirculating?” We would also do fifteen hyperbaric chamber treatments, considered somewhat of an alternative procedure in the U.S. and one he almost certainly would not have gotten in Philly, but something that many surgeons, including Dr. Solis, swear by in wound care. The chamber, known for the Bends for Scuba divers, infuses oxygen into the body which gives it a boost to do its own work of reversing damage.

Our family would stay in Cancun under the care of Dr. Solis for almost four weeks until our hospital discharge. Despite having to spend every night on the hospital couch (except for six nights when my siblings graciously took my place), and even when Charlie would have been stable enough to Air Evac out, I told Dr. Solis many times, “I’m not going anywhere.” Why would I leave the care of a team of doctors who were getting ideal results, who had treated crocodile bites before, and who were giving me all they had at their disposal? Dr. Solis had told me (and I didn’t doubt him), “If or when I think you will be better served somewhere else, I will tell you and send you.” Why would I switch to the unknown? What did Philly doctors know about crocodile bites? Having lived abroad for many years, I’ve personally never had worse care than in the bureaucracy of the United States medical system. I had no desire to take our chances here. This was the right choice. We could not have hoped for more exceptional care.

It’s been over 3 months since the attack, and we are now back in Philly. The last scab came off at 12 weeks, but the wound is still slightly chafing. The scars must now be nurtured for proper healing, and Charlie will always have a work of art on his right leg. He is now walking with an awkward gait, like he has a wooden leg, since he doesn’t yet have full range of motion or strength. Though it is not guaranteed, running, jumping and playing soccer are expected to return, though it will take many months and he will miss this year’s soccer season. Charlie believes he will make full recovery, and I am not going to argue with him. Dr. Solis has warned us that Charlie may be a great athlete again, and he believes that he will play soccer again, but he has also said that the body will never be the same after trauma like this.

Johnny and I have the occasional nightmare or sleepless night as our minds are processing the trauma, a force, but I am believing His wholeness for us, too. Johnny is particularly curious how one should react in a crocodile attack, so we have watched some videos.

We made many new friends this summer and are now reunited with our Philly friends and getting back into the routine of life. While I am alone in parenting my boys, I never felt alone this summer. My family rotated in and out the entire time, and my old friends and new friends stayed in constant contact. I know that many of you shared my pain because I could hear it in your messages. It was a very collective spiritual experience, and, although my religious beliefs are evident in this account, this spiritual experience is not about our differences in religion, but rather about our collective appeal to the Almighty, the ruler of our Universe. I have no doubt that the heavens and the earth were fighting over Charlie, but I also believe that God knew his outcome, designed his recovery, and allowed many of you to stand in His stead. One of my favorite quotes is in the second book of C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy, “Perlandra”: “He [the character, Ransom] stood for [God], but no more than Eve would have stood for Him by simply ‘not’ eating the apple, or Any man stands for Him in doing ‘any good action’.”

To all of you who played a part, to those who directly saved Charlie’s life acting in wisdom and courage -- Cyrus, Candice, Marc, Connor, Andre, Ismael, Ragab, Juanito, Mary, Adrian, Dr. Solis and Dr. Ortiz -- and to all of you around the world who prayed from your spirit on Charlie’s behalf, including my brother Jeff who kicked it off, thank you. You stood in His stead doing a good action. And thank you God for sparing my son. For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory, forever and ever.

Gallery 1: Images from night of attack. Many of leg during surgery. Note: graphic images.

Gallery 3: Images taken during our month long Cancun stay while Charlie was in hospital.

Gallery 2: Images taken night of attack, (around 1 a.m.) and morning after.

Gallery 4: Images leaving hospital and back in Philly