Amelia Dean, 19, was attacked by a large male bison while hiking with a friend in Custer State Park in South Dakota seven weeks ago. She was left bleeding profusely after the bison charged and one of its horns pierced her left thigh, severing the femoral artery and damaging nerves in her lower leg and between her thighs, according to her parents Matthew and Jacqueline Dean. After the attack, the animal, which can grow to be more than 6 feet long and weigh up to 907 kilograms (2,000 pounds), stood near the backpack’s head until her friend managed to lead it away and called the authorities emergency. “I remember feeling the pressure on my hip. My hip is pushed back and I remember the feeling of being thrown in the air and going face-first,” the teenager told local station KOTA-TV from her hospital bed at Monument Health in Rapid City, South Dakota. “The bison got stuck and its hooves were right over my head. I remember them being right next to me,” he said. Dean said the bison, one of 1,500 in the 29,000-hectare (71,000-acre) wildlife park, appeared startled as she and her friend, who was walking a dog on a lead, approached it. “It’s quite a surreal experience especially the fact that we didn’t do anything to really warrant it. We just took a walk in the park,” he told the local TV station. Her parents launched a GoFundMe in an attempt to raise the £140,000 needed for her to undergo specialist treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The couple, from Brockham in Surrey, are hoping to secure specialist care from a peripheral nerve surgeon to treat their daughter’s paralysis and severe nerve pain in her left leg. In an appeal for donations on the fundraising page, her parents wrote: “This could be Mia’s best chance to regain control of her leg and time is running out. “We are very lucky that our daughter is still breathing as she should have bled out in two to eight minutes after the artery was severed and the ambulance didn’t arrive for 20 minutes. It’s a miracle he’s alive today. “We … just wish she could walk and dance again and live her life to the fullest, without chronic pain.” The couple added that although their daughter’s travel insurance has paid for the femoral artery bypass, the insurer has refused to pay for the specialist’s examination of her nerve injury. The teenager was attacked on the second day of a road trip across the US near the end of the intervening year after traveling across Europe. He was due to start studying at Edinburgh University next month. But she said she hoped her ordeal would not deter others from making the trip. “This is a horrific accident – this is not going to happen every time someone walks through a park. Let’s hope.”
