How a Woman Survived with Her Intestines Hanging Out from Her Belly

How a Woman Survived with Her Intestines Hanging Out from Her Belly

Before we begin, be warned. Sensitive contents up ahead. Readers might find the subject to be disturbing, if not, shocking. But my purpose is not to gross out, offend, or even turn people off, but to send out this message of hope, courage and healing. Feel free to scroll past if you wish.

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Takieyah Reaves is a mother of two from Newark, New Jersey. On the outside, she is a typical everyday mum you will meet in the neighborhood. But she once endured a horrific incident that almost took her life and left her with lasting marks. She kept her body clothed, to cover that undesirable remnant of that incident. She let no one see it, not even her kids, as it altered her body in a somewhat grotesque way. Oftentimes, the woman was asked if she was pregnant, or how many months she was carrying it, something that was hard to explain. Yet the alteration to her figure that resulted in childbearing look wasn’t caused by pregnancy either. A crime took place in 2017, and she became a victim of a shootout. She was lucky that the damage she sustained failed to destroy her internal organs, but it shattered that abdominal wall.

And underneath her shirt is her belly, with the intestines hanging out.

Victim of Gun Violence

Aftermath of the shooting.

Again, it all began in July 2017. As Takieyah Reaves recalled during her interview with Metro, she was outside the door of the Boulevard Nightclub. Then a shooting incident occurred, and she caught in the spray of bullet. The shooter was a random attacker, who fired indiscriminately into the crowd of clubbers, resulting in three people being injured.

And one of them was Reaves.

She recalled, “I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, the guy was firing off gunshots and I was stood in the doorway. I didn’t even realize I had been shot at first, but then I collapsed. I was in the doorstep of the club when I got shot. I remember feeling very tired, like I wanted to go to sleep. My friend Lavona kept telling me to keep my eyes open and listen to the voices.”

One of the bullets caught her in the right leg, but the other one caused a more serious injury. It hit her in the abdomen, causing it to blow open. The damage was so severe that she wasn’t expected to make it out alive. The doctors warned that she wasn’t unlikely to survive the surgery meant to repair her damaged insides. Indeed, she suffered a massive blood loss of 4.5 litres of blood, and her heart stopped during the emergency surgery.

But somehow, she survived.

Though the bullet shattered her abdomen, it failed to hit every major organ inside. The doctors were also able to stabilize her condition during her emergency surgery, and the bullet was eventually removed.

“I wasn’t supposed to make it out of hospital alive, my family were told to say their goodbyes. I am so grateful to still be here and be given a second chance at life,” she said, but there was a problem. Reaves mentioned that “I was so depressed by my body; I had scars all over and I hated it.” That’s because the tragedy left more than scars. It basically altered the appearance of her body, particularly in the abdomen where the bullet hit her.