Surviving Great White

[willli]

It has crossed every surfers mind. The nightmarish vision of a mouth full of teeth rising silently from blue-black depth, ready to spring shut on muscle and bone and tear it away, swimming off with a piece of your confident psyche as well. Surfers exude confidence borne on adrenalin-spiked bravado that having survived the punishment of ocean waves and the addiction of the satisfying ride we feel part of the liquid realm. But the shark has always been there and has achieved landlord status to which visiting serfs offer worried respect.
So there I am, straddling a piece of fiberglass and foam, the sun baking my back as waves of heat rise from the sandy shore, peering into the depths at what appears to be a moving shadow. I can feel the hair stand on the small of my neck as I look about and realize I am alone. My body exudes the smell of fear as my heart begins to race but reason climbs over the cycle as I recognize the shadow swirling toward the surface as nothing more than a bait ball, and reason also dictates the maxim “paddle in”. Feeding time has surely begun.
The hot sand gives way to cooler earth shaded from sun and a parting look at the ocean reveals a pod of dolphins happily thrashing water teeming with fish. I smile cause dolphin presence means the landlord is conducting his business elsewhere. The bulk of the swell is gone. Tomorrow will be a sweltering day with a flat sea.
In a perfect world all nights are cool and satisfying for sleep. This night is hot and close and the sun-baked tightness of my skin feels like a cocoon about to rupture. She lies there naked and cool beside me but I choose not to disturb her, finally settling on my back as I try and remember my most satisfying ride of the previous day. Fitful sleep is full of dreams and in them the cold eyes of an indiscriminate mouth sampling my extremities, tossing me about, and slamming me with razors. I wake still hot and tired and turn to see blood smears on the sheet where I lay. I reach around touching my back but I cannot see. I wake Sheila. “You’d better see a doctor” does not sit well with my perfectly tuned body sculpted by wave, fiberglass, and sun.
The General Practitioner has a waiting room filled with aged and infirm and very young and coughing and I feel completely out of place. Last thing I needed a doctor for I settled myself. A nasty gash to my face from my skeg that was resolved with the best tape available, however unsanitary it was. That I finished the remote trip with frequent changes of duct tape didn’t deter my companions from their usual pranks, but this episode of blood seems serious.
Its not that I don’t like doctors, I actually know one who surfs. I just don’t like seeing doctors in their element, all sanitary and smelling of antiseptic. It’s a chemical clean that feels nothing like a pristine day on the ocean. He looks at my back and I’m expecting the worst will be stitches and an admonition to stay out of the water for a while. He hands me a slip of paper instead. It has the name of another doctor written on it. “Make an appointment to see him. Don’t wait. Good luck.”
It’s the “good luck” part that had me rattled. I pressed him a bit but he wouldn’t say much other than this other doctor was expert at what I might have and rather than get all worried just see him for the definitive word. “The definitive word on what?” “Melanoma” is the last word he said to me.
I felt the hair on the back of my neck standing and my strength draining away as I walked to the waiting room, black cold eyes watching me and razor sharp teeth surrounding my every step as if I would sink through the floor in a sea of my own blood. The secretary was talking to me. She had the other doctor on the phone. I could go there straight away or wait a month to see him. “Straight away.” I said as I looked blankly at the circling fins.
The expert had a very different office, soft and comfortable. The music was classical; the plants were well cared for. He came out to greet me remarking at how much sun I must have seen. He led me to the soft innards of a spacious room. He asked me to completely undress and lie back on his examining table. He examined every inch of me, photographing as he went along. He spoke into a recording device in medical terms everything he observed. At the end of the exam he had me lie on my stomach and said I would feel a pinch, perhaps some burning. Good I thought. Someone is finally doing something. What? I could feel a sort of tugging, a raspy dragging of something on my back, and the smell of flesh burning. Then tape being applied to this fresh wound in my back. He told me to get dressed and come out to his office.
‘You had a nasty mole which I’ve removed and we’ll send it out for biopsy. Here’s the name and number of a surgeon who has done many of these operations. I’ll have him put you on the operating schedule. Call his secretary for the details in a few days. Any questions?’
Dear God where do I start? I’m sinking in the chair in a frightful sea and the fins are circling ever closer, “how did this happen to me?” is all I can manage. But the dolphins are jumping and singing a song and the words are sending the circling fins ever closer:

Oh smiling SUN
With black teeth no one can see
How stealthy you are
Shining brightly while biting me

Wide and deep. Ask anyone who has had melanoma surgery what those words mean. Think of deep flesh cut away in the depth of chemical induced sleep. Think of another area of the body where flesh is taken to fill the hole, the surgical defect created in the first stab at getting it all. Think skin grafts and double rotational flaps of skin stretched closed. Think massive scars and disfigurement. Think of lymphatic system removal in a desperate attempt to capture and remove each and every melanoma cell. And if all this fails and one or two cells escape there is the prospect of metastatic melanoma. The sharks are swimming in my own blood.
It’s been years and metastatic melanoma has surfaced in my skin. I’ve had too many day surgeries to count. Bites from sharp shiny scalpel teeth mark my body. My only hope lies in experimental protocol, clinical trials. My name is X. Yet the melanoma sharks are ever busy. There are organs to bite and when these bites are discovered surgical removal ensues. Hope lies with my own immune system. My own blood is removed, hunter killer cells recruited and made stronger and given instructions before they are injected into the melanoma inhabiting my skin. Hope lies in stimulating an immune response so that my body fights back.
The once perfectly tuned body for the perfectly shaped foil of foam and glass to be ridden in a perfect way on the perfect wave has been broken. Life is spent in the shadows protected from the malicious sun. The wondrous carefree years of following surf and sun have been replaced with a shell of what carefree surfing life I once had. The sharks in the ocean have been busy gathering headlines in the terrestrial press. The surfing media repeat and amplify the stories of sharks inflicting horrific bites, scarring and disfiguring and even killing people. My fingers trace a path on my scars. “Yeah, horrific” I mutter to myself. What are they responsible for? Your chances of being bitten by a shark are less than being struck by lightning. And in silent and ever increasing toll, metastatic melanoma kills thousands and thousands.
So the next time you’re out surfing and worried about sharks, stretch your back to the warm rays of the sun and peer into the depths. See if you feel the bite. I didn’t. I never gave it a thought.

[DarcyM]

Wow.

Exceptionally well said, and a timely warning too as summer approaches.
dm

[Steve Neal]

I once had a friend who was bitten by that same beast. He didn't even see it coming. He seemed so strong, but all it took was that one bite. The beast had got the best of him. I tempt this same beast on a regular basis knowing its bite can be fatal. As I set here writing this I fill the wounds he inflected on me over this past weekend. Never once thinking of protecting myself from him.Only occasionaly hidding in the shadows when his presence broke me into a sweat. His teeth are sharp and his mouth is wide and the things we choose to do put use in harms way. So stay weiry and wise protect yourselfs from this beast.Willi stay strong! Know in your mind that you are strong and can over come anything.Don't let this beast beat you!