Newfound fame follows fish-struck teen

The Sickles junior is expected home this weekend after recovering from a stab wound caused by a wayward houndfish. Oh, and David Letterman's show has called.

By LOGAN D. MABE and RICHARD DANIELSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 23, 2000

NORTHDALE -- Stephanie Mittler, whose freakish spring break encounter with a barb-nosed fish put her in the hospital for five days, is eager to return to the routine life of a high school student.

"I'm looking forward to just going back to normal," Stephanie said Friday morning in a whispery voice as she readied to leave Fisherman's Hospital in Marathon. "Just sleeping in my own bed."

The family expected to be back to their Northdale home this weekend.

During a snorkeling outing last Sunday, the 17-year-old Sickles High junior was standing in chest-deep water off Big Pine Key when a houndfish flew out of the water and stabbed her in the neck with its spearlike nose. The bill of the fish broke off in her neck and below her left ear.

She underwent emergency surgery, and doctors said the injury could have been fatal because the bill narrowly missed Stephanie's carotid artery.

Her mother called it a miracle, but wanted to wait until Stephanie was out of the hospital to discuss it.

"When we get home we'll probably download all of that," Laura Mittler said Friday. "I have five children and this is the first time any one of them has been in a hospital."

But Mittler said when she got the call that there had been an accident, she immediately thought of Stephanie.

"If somebody is going to get bumped or bruised, or if something is going to fall out of a closet onto someone's head, it's going to be Stephanie," her mother said. "We call her our aches and pain girl."

One of Stephanie's doctors said the accident could have been much more serious.

"It's truly amazing," said John A. Hughes-Papsidero. In his 16 years as an ear, nose and throat surgeon, he has seen plenty of gunshot and knife wounds, but never anything inflicted by a houndfish, a species he hadn't even heard of before Sunday.

"I'd say this pretty much takes the cake in my 16 years in practice," he said.

One of the pieces of the houndfish's bill had stuck into Stephanie's neck just above the the spot where the carotid artery splits into a "Y."

It ended up "within a couple millimeters one way or the other of actually puncturing the artery," he said. "If she had nicked one of those major arteries ... I don't know if they could have controlled it. She could have died by the time she got to the emergency room."

Hughes-Papsidero said he expects Stephanie to make a full recovery.

Mittler said her daughter is already well on the way.

"She's handled this with just complete elegance," Mittler said. "She has not missed a day of school all year and she's pretty determined to go back on Tuesday."

And Stephanie may have to make time for more TV talk show and news media interviews.

"I've been in a lot of newspapers and on TV and radio," Stephanie said. "And the hospital operator said that David Letterman called here."

Her mother noted that the damage to Stephanie's vocal chords hasn't put a damper on her chattiness.

"It doesn't seem to be stopping her," Mittler said. "She's a great kid is all I can say."

-- Logan D. Mabe can be reached at 226-3464 or mabe@sptimes.com.

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