A great white shark attack in Los Angeles may have saved Eugene Finney’s life. On examination, the doctors found something else.
Eugene Finney is probably the only person in America who is happy to have been attacked by a shark. He was swimming with his daughter in Huntington Beach in the greater Los Angeles area in July 2015 when, instead of a wave, something else – something much more massive – slammed into his back.
From one split second to the next he had stars in front of his eyes, everything went black for a moment. “I would say it was like being hit by a ton of bricks or a whip in a car, but it wasn’t. I’ve never felt anything like it,” Finney told the Washington Post upon impact.
bloody cut
Completely stunned, he grabbed his daughter and swam back to the safe shore. It was only there that he noticed that he was bleeding profusely from a 12-inch cut on his back. His partner and son, who stayed on the beach, could still make out the fin of at least one shark in the water behind him.
Warning sign after a shark alert on a beach near Los Angeles. File image.FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/picturedesk.com
But it wasn’t until the next day that a surfer collided with a great white shark that the American put two and two together. He realized that something similar must have happened to him.
discovered kidney tumor
But as the pain didn’t want to subside in the days that followed, the then 39-year-old man sought help at a hospital – and suffered a second major shock within a short time. CT scan revealed a small tumor in the right kidney. Cancer!
Thanks to the initial stage of the disease, the attending physicians were able to remove the malignant mass. About a fifth of the kidney had to be cut. The chances of recovery were good.
“I would hug the shark”
And indeed, Finney managed to recover from it. For him, this sign with the fence post, or a great white shark, was a “sign from mother nature.” He is sure: without this incident, he would never have gone to the hospital and the tumor would have remained unknown.
“I wouldn’t know until it spread and metastasized. I would have lost weight and gotten sick – and then it would be too late,” he told the paper. He is sincerely grateful to the shark: “If I could meet and hug this shark, I would.”
Browsing account rp time07.08.2022, 19:55| Act: 07.08.2022, 19:55