What Life's Like for Woman Who Lost Arm, Hand After Walking Into Plane Propeller

One woman is adjusting to a new life after losing her right arm and left hand in a freak accident with a plane propeller.

“I didn’t think I was going to live,” Shanna Buono told Inside Edition of the incident.

Tragedy struck last January, when Buono's boyfriend, Clark, was checking out a plane with a friend. He's a pilot, and the two were in the cockpit when Buono approached the aircraft.

“I thought it would make a good picture,” she said. 

Buono walked toward the plane, holding her cellphone in front of her. She said it was dark and the wind muffled the sound of the idling engine.

“I never saw or heard the propeller at all,” she said.

Suddenly, she walked right into the propeller blade. It took her arm and hand.

Clark raced to her side, and his friend called 911. 

“I just thought ‘How can I live this way? How am I going to go on? How am I going to survive?’” she said. 

She had not only survived, but she has moved on with her life and is not letting her loss stop her from living. 

“She’s one of the toughest women I met,” Clark told Inside Edition. 

She puts on her own makeup, vacuums and uses a homemade prosthetic device fashioned from a soda bottle to blow dry her hair. Another homemade device helps her eat on her own. 

Inside Edition was with her as she met with prosthetic specialist Brian Moore, who measured her for some new limbs. 

He told her she will be able to swim and ride a bike. "We'll be able to adapt your prosthesis for whatever you want," he said.

She now has set her sights on training for a triathlon as she gets fitted for her prosthetics. 

RELATED STORIES