Actually, it was doctors who found she had a bullet in her

Jul 11, 2015 08:14 GMT  ·  By

Last Saturday, a woman in the city of DeLand in Florida was hanging out with friends at a local café when, all of a sudden, she felt a sharp pain in her right leg. When she looked at her thigh, it became obvious that she was injured. 

Being Independence Day, however, the woman simply assumed she had been hit by a firework gone astray. Hence her surprise that, when she finally went to see a doctor five days after the incident, she was told that she had a bullet lodged in her leg.

The woman had no idea she got shot

As mentioned, it was on Saturday that, while celebrating Independence Day with friends at a local café, 42-year-old Heather Charlebois of DeLand, Florida, felt something hit her leg.

The woman went to the bathroom to have a look at her thigh. There wasn't all that much blood coming out of the injury and so she didn't think much of it. More so seeing how the bleeding stopped on its own after a couple of days.

“I went to the bathroom and looked at my leg and that’s when it started bleeding. It bled for the first couple days,” the woman said in an interview, as cited by The Blaze.

A few days after the incident, the woman posted a photo of her injury on Facebook and some of her friends told her that it looked suspiciously like a bullet injury. It was then that Heather Charlebois decided to see a doctor.

Five days and a medical exam after the incident, she learned that she had indeed been shot and that she had a .38-caliber bullet lodged in her leg, at a depth of about 4 centimeters (1.5 inches).

The bullet is still in the woman's thigh

Because the .38-caliber got lodged next to the 42-year-old's femoral artery, the medical experts Heather Charlebois has so far consulted all refused to operate on her and remove it for fear that the intervention could kill her.

Still, the woman isn't about to give up. She plans to see other surgeons and hopes to find one willing to operate on her and pull the stray bullet out of her leg.

“It’s kind of surreal and cool and not cool. I’m going to get a second, maybe third opinion from other surgeons because I don’t want it left in me,” the woman told the press.

The bullet is lodged next to a major artery
The bullet is lodged next to a major artery

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Heather Charlebois
The bullet is lodged next to a major artery
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