00:00A man in California was attacked by a shark, but instead of killing him, it actually saved his life.
00:04This guy, Eugene Finney, is swimming in the ocean off Huntington Beach with his 10-year-old daughter.
00:09They're about 100 yards offshore when a huge wave rolls in, like a 7-9 footer.
00:13So he grabs his daughter and dives under the wave.
00:16But as he's coming back up to the surface with her, he gets hit in the back by something hard.
00:20Like he said, it was the hardest he'd ever been hit in his entire life.
00:23He pushes through it because he's really just focused on getting his daughter back to the beach safely.
00:27And they make it back, but as they're walking up onto the beach, his daughter looks at him and goes,
00:31Daddy, why are you bleeding?
00:32Turns out he's got about a foot-long gash on his upper back.
00:36And his girlfriend and son, who were both there on the beach, said they saw fins in the water right
00:41where they were swimming.
00:42Also, two days later, another surfer was bitten by a great white shark in that exact same spot.
00:47So pretty safe to say that's what got him.
00:49Anyway, he flies home to Massachusetts and then goes to the hospital.
00:53Because he's suffering from severe back pains and chest pains,
00:56they run x-rays and they find that the blunt force trauma from how hard he was hit
01:01caused bruising around his heart and inflammation in his chest cavity,
01:04which was what was causing all the pain.
01:06But while they're looking at the scans, they notice something else that has nothing to do with the shark attack.
01:11This guy's got a tumor on his kidney the size of a walnut.
01:14Because he went in when he did, they were able to go in and remove the tumor completely,
01:19which the biopsy did come back as cancerous.
01:21So eventually it probably would have killed him.
01:23His surgeon said that if it weren't for the shark encounter,
01:26because Eugene was a healthy 39-year-old guy with no symptoms,
01:30that tumor probably would have gone undetected for another five to six years.
01:34By then, the surgery would have been significantly less likely to be successful.
01:38The next time life hits you with a shark attack, just remember,
01:41you never know what seemingly horrible thing might have the best silver lining of your entire life.
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