A quiet day at the beach turned into something more terrifying for a Florida teenager recently.

The 17-year-old girl was looking for scallops in the five-foot-day water near Grassy Island in Florida, when she was suddenly attacked, being dragged down into the water.

Her worst fears had been realized. Addison Bethea had been bit by a shark. 

And the next thing I know something latches onto my leg and I was like that’s not right. And then I look and it’s a big old shark,” she told Good Morning America.

“Then I remember from watching the “Animal Planet” to like…punch [it] in the nose or something like that. And I couldn’t get around to his nose the way he bit me.”

“I realized it was a shark so I started screaming and it pulled me under again,” she said. “I would come up and scream for my brother and try to get it off of me.

Her brother, Rhett Willingham, who happened to be an EMT, jumped into the water to help her. “She came back up (out of the water) and I saw, like, the blood and everything, and I saw the shark,” he said.

“So then I swam over there, grabbed her, and then pushed them all, kind of trying to separate them,” Rhett, 22, said. “ And he just kept coming. So I grabbed her, swam backwards and kicked him and then yelled for help.”

The young man was able to beat and kick the shark, finally prying his sister loose and getting her on his boat.

Making a tourniquet out of a boat rope, Rhett put it on her upper leg to help staunch the bleeding. After calling for an ambulance, they managed to get back to land. and put it around her right upper leg to control the bleeding. Rhett called for an ambulance before using the boat to get back on land.

After being airlifted 80 miles away, she had surgery to stabilize her, but unfortunately her right leg had suffered too much damage to be saved.

“The shark attacked her right leg, front quad muscle was completely annihilated,” said Shane, Addison’s dad.

“It was devastating, a nasty, nasty wound. The vascular surgeon took the vein from the left leg and turned it into an artery for the right leg to get blood flow.”

Despite all she went through, Addison made every effort to stay positive. 

“She woke up and was communicating to us through typing on her phone. She was in good spirits and cracking jokes about beating up the shark,” Shane wrote on Facebook.

According to the sheriff’s office, it’s unclear what type of shark attacked Addison, but it was described as approximately 9 feet long.

For Andrea, her life now has a new learning curve, but one she embraced quickly. Discussing her new prosthetic leg, she said,

Honestly I caught onto it really really quickly, because I knew, I’m really stubborn. And I really wanted to walk.”

The accident, Andrea said, has not stopped her life. “If anything I’m doing more activities now then I have before,” she said. “Just because I like staying active. So I go to the gym like five times a week, and do weightlifting and stuff. Or on the weekends I’ll go fishing or I’ll go on the four wheelers with my boyfriend. It just depends what I’m in the mood for.

Having a prosthetic leg isn’t the only thing that changed in Bethea’s life. She said her outlook has changed.

“And my patience maybe a little bit better,” she said. “I know my positivity has definitely gotten a lot better and my faith.”

Watch below for a look at the amazing teenager!

Sources: My Positive Outlooks | Good Morning America | WCJB