Shannon Parker left her group on a hike in California's Sequoia National Park to get her sunglasses from the car. This was a bad idea. Before she could get them, she came face to face with the lion and had a scary thought.
In an interview with ABC, she said, "When I looked at it, I knew exactly what it was." "Either the mountain lion or I was going to die. We knew that one of us would die."
The cat attacked, and it bit Parker on the head. Parker fought with the cat for six minutes before she was able to free her face and scream to get her friends' attention. They scared it away with rocks and a pocketknife, but not before Parker's right eye and thigh were badly hurt and gouged.
After surgery to fix her eye didn't work, doctors gave her a
prosthetic. Parker didn't get hurt so badly that she was in danger of dying, but the damage to her face was so bad that she said it was the most difficult part of the attack to deal with.
When he told her that he could fix the damage to her face, her plastic surgeon did a lot to help her get better.
"And that right there, I mean, it just changed my attitude; it changed the hope I had. It made a big difference, "CNN, she said. "Then I knew I was not only alive, but also going to get better."
Not only did she have to heal from her physical wounds, but she also had to heal from the emotional trauma she had gone through. Part of Parker's answer has been to try to find meaning in what she has been through. She went back to Sequoia National Park less than a year after the attack to see the place where she had to fight for her life. Now, she's trying to teach people what to do if a mountain lion attacks. She also wants to put up warning signs where mountain lions might be a threat to hikers, because she says she would have stayed with her group if there had been one.
Parker says that even though her recovery is hard, it gets better each day. "I think my strength and hope have helped me get to where I am now."
