Woman injured in “Playpen” accident recalls moment boat propeller severed her feet; “I thought, ‘this is how I die'”

CHICAGO (CBS) — She remembers everything, and for the first time a woman is speaking about the tragic moment in Lake Mighigan’s popular Playpen area, when a boat propeller severed her feet.

“I felt something, and I just let my body go, and I thought my legs, my intestines, and my body’s next. So I thought, ‘this is how I die,’ and I had given up,” Lana Batochir said.

Batochir is sharing those painful memories while she recovers from surgery to amputate her legs, 10 inches below her knees.

“I am going to accept that my life is changed forever, but … I’m just lucky to be sitting here,” she told CBS 2’s Steven graves.

Batochir said she is on medication, dealing with excruciating pain, but to have the chance to hug her two children again helps her deal with it.

“I still haven’t seen my kids,” she said.

What started out as a fun time on a boat in the playpen on Saturday quickly turned into chaos and panic.

“I just thought I was going to die,” she said. “I have to accept that I have no legs anymore.”

Batochir was on a raft attached to the boat with her husband and other friends, when the back of another boat was getting closer.

“My back was turned, and we were pulling our raft closer to the boat through the rope we had attached,” she said.

But, as investigators say the other boat’s anchor malfunctioned, its captain turned on the engine. The propeller sucked Batochir into the water, severing her feet.

Her friend’s hand was also cut.

“I remember everything,” Batochir said. “We were getting sucked into the propeller and feet first.”

But Batochir says her husband was there to pull her head above water.

“He’s the one who saved my life.”

Batochir is now recovering from three amputation surgeries. She has no health insurance, but is thankful for the financial and emotional support from the public. A GoFundMe page has raised more than $123,000 for her medical bills as of Thursday night.

“It’s touching, and I feel lucky. I do feel lucky,” she said.

Her life changed in an instant.

Batochir has retained a lawyer, but she is not ready to talk about potential legal action. She will have to learn to walk again with prosthetics.