Man says shark attack saved his life after cancer found

After a summer of shark-induced injuries and scares, a Massachusetts man claims his run-in with the scary fish had actually saved his life.

Eugene Finney, of Fitchburg, northwest of Boston, was on a family vacation in Huntington, California, when a shark smashed into him while swimming, CBS Boston reports.

“Something struck me from behind. I’d never been hit like that before. It was pretty jarring. It kind of gave me an instant whiplash,” Finney told CBS.

Though he sustained a gash across his back from the shark, it was not until later that night, at home, that Finney started experiencing real pain.

After bouts of chest and back pain, the father of two went to the hospital, where doctors found interior bruising and gave him an additional (and unexpected) diagnosis – he had a walnut-sized tumor on his right kidney.

Doctors at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center removed the cancerous tumor using minimally-invasive robotic surgery and Finney says he feels lucky to be alive.

“If this didn’t happen with the shark, causing me to go in with this chest pain, I would have never known about this cancer,” he told CBS.

“If they hadn’t made this incidental find, I wouldn’t have known until it was too late,” he shared with San Jose Mercury News. “I could have ended up with cancer metastasizing all over my stomach area, and you don’t come back from that.”