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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Ramon Antonio Vargas

North Carolina woman, 82, survives nine days trapped in her bathtub after fall

a cold faucet
Joan Rivet told the Mountaineer she took a step backwards in her bathroom and toppled over into her tub. Photograph: artbokeh/Getty Images/iStockphoto

An 82-year-old North Carolina woman says she survived falling in her bathtub and being trapped there for nine days by turning the faucet on with her foot and drinking water that she managed to splash up to her face – all while drifting in and out of consciousness.

Joan Rivet recently shared her remarkable survival story with North Carolina’s the Mountaineer newspaper, providing an extreme example of the kinds of emergencies that can face the millions of older Americans who fall by accident annually, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates.

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