An 82-year-old American woman claims to have survived after falling into her bathtub, where she was stuck for nine days, unable to get up. To stay alive, she had to be resourceful in order to stay hydrated.
Joan Rivet recently told her incredible survival story to the local newspaper The Mountaineerin a story picked up by many American media. The events took place at the beginning of June.
Widowed since 2023, the 82-year-old lived alone in a home in the mountain community of Clyde, North Carolina, with her cat, Phoebe.
On the evening of June 1, as she was getting ready to go to bed, her daily life was turned upside down. Joan Rivet took a step backwards in her bathroom before falling into the bathtub, taking the shower rod and curtain with her.
Injured her back in her fall, she quickly realized that she was unable to get up.
Her phone was in another room, so she couldn’t call for help. The octogenarian tried to shout, but no one heard her. Hours passed, then days, and she realized she had to find a way to drink water if she wanted to survive.
The faucet was at the other end of the bathtub and she couldn’t reach it with her hand. So she found a way to turn the faucet with her foot, then drink by splashing the water up to her face.
Meanwhile, Joan Rivet regularly slipped into unconsciousness before coming to her senses, simply observing the days “get dark then light, dark then light.”
Saved thanks to her brother
Haywood County Sheriff Bill Wilke confirmed that deputies from his office found Joan Rivet on June 10 after her brother, Bill Lesko, who lives in Georgia, about a five-hour drive from her home, requested a health check, US media reported.
The latter was worried about no longer being able to contact his sister, who was not answering their weekly calls.
The police finally discovered her semi-conscious in her bathtub on June 10.
When she arrived at the hospital, Joan Rivet suffered from severe dehydration as well as bedsores caused by the many days spent immobile in the bathtub.
On July 7, she was transferred to a rehabilitation center in Waynesville, North Carolina.
“I am slowly regaining my energy, I am also regaining self-confidence,” Joan Rivet told The Mountaineer.
However, this mishap convinced her to move to Georgia to live with family members. She also believes that this ordeal profoundly changed her vision of neighborhood life.
Not the only one
This story illustrates the emergency situations faced by many elderly people who accidentally fall each year.
According to data from the National Institute of Public Health of Quebec, falls were responsible for 21,644 deaths in Quebec between 2000 and 2019. People aged 65 and over represented 91.9% of these deaths.
