A near fatal run-in with a shark ended up saving a man's life when the following checkup found that he had cancer.
Eugene Finney went swimming with his girlfriend and his two children at Huntington Beach, California when he was attacked by a shark. Describing that the attack felt like something heavy slammed on his back, Finney recalled that all he could do was swim back to shore while clutching his daughter without looking back.
"The surf was pretty big that day...the water is pretty deep. You can't touch the bottom," Finney recalled."[The shark hit] harder than I've ever been hit in my life."
After reaching shore, the disoriented 39 year old found that he sustained a deep cut and several bruises across his back. He had no idea what had attacked him at the time, though witnesses would later see sightings of a shark fin in the area.
Lifeguards quickly ushered people out of the water, and the beach was closed temporarily.
But even after surviving the attack, Finney remained plagued by pain on his torso and upper body to the point of not being able to sleep well. At the urging of his boss at the Fitchburg Art Museum, he sought medical advice.
"I said, I guess I'm going to have to go to the doctor after work. [My boss] Nick told me [to go now]," Finney said.
Despite his condition, Finney was able to reach St. Elizabeth's Medical Center by himself, where doctors arranged for multiple tests including a chest X-ray, an EKG and a CT scan to determine the problem. At that point, Finney was starting to think that it was more than just the shark attack.
Doctors would later confirm that aside from the thoracic cavity bruising due to trauma, there was also a mass as big as a walnut found in one of his kidneys. The mass, the doctors told him, was most probably cancerous.
Fortunately, it appeared that the cancer was caught in its early stage. Detecting cancer early usually meant better therapeutic modality choices and the cancer being more responsive to treatment.
Finney acknowledged that the shark attack that fateful day was instrumental in helping him detect his cancer and saving his life. If left unchecked, the tumor may have ended up growing and spreading to other parts of his body.
He added that his grandmother died of stomach cancer, which may have also originated from a kidney tumor.
"If they hadn't made this incidental find, I wouldn't have known until it was too late," he said. "I could have ended up with cancer metastasizing all over my stomach area, and you don't come back from that."
He also felt fortunate that the shark only slammed into him instead of biting and causing a more severe injury.
With the help of Finney's urologic oncologist, Dr. Ingolf Tuerk, the tumor was successfully removed and was able to save most of his kidney. He is currently cancer-free but will need to have a repeat CT scan after a year to monitor possible remission.
Photo: Steve Garner | Flickr
