Salmon Creek Beach shark attack victim making progress, but still in considerable pain

Eric Steinley leads with the good news.

He’s in far less pain than he was a month ago, in the hours and days after a great white shark clamped down on his right leg while Steinley was sitting on his surfboard off North Salmon Creek Beach, a few miles north of Bodega Bay.

Steinley was transported by helicopter to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. Two nights later, surgeons operated on his right leg. Four days after that, on Oct. 9, Steinley moved back into his Santa Rosa home. Last week, a doctor removed 70 surgical staples from his leg.

During that operation, doctors repaired his severed popliteal vein, a major blood vessel running behind the knee and up the back of the thigh. After an ultrasound Wednesday morning, Steinley was told the vein is “healing up nicely.”

While he’s “in a much better place now,” said the 38-year-old, he is still in considerable pain, unable to walk or even put weight on his right foot. It remains unclear when or if he will regain full use of it.

A GoFundMe campaign had raised nearly $42,000, as of Wednesday morning, to help Steinley pay for hospital bills, physical therapy, prescription drugs, a home care bed, a medical reclining chair and an array of other expenses. Those funds were augmented by a “Dine and Donate” event Tuesday at PizzaLeah, in Windsor’s Bell Village.

Steinley and his girlfriend, Idoia de Eguia Luna, stopped by PizzaLeah briefly, “to show our thanks,” he said. But severe pain in his leg forced him to cut the visit short.

Whenever he gets “vertical“ — even just sitting in his wheelchair — blood pools in his right foot.

“Anytime I’m not laying down my fluid and blood get stuck down in my foot and ankle,” he said. “So I can’t really get out of bed much — or shouldn’t get out of bed much, I should say.”

Wednesday’s ultrasound was intended, said Steinley, “to see if maybe there are some other circulatory things they need to fix.”

While doctors are able to detect a pulse in his right foot — “that’s a great thing,” Steinley said — he’s only able to feel or move around 40% of it.

“I’m told that can get better over time, but we won’t know for a few months.”

He is due back at the neurosurgeon’s office on Nov.17 for a checkup. Sometime around the end of January, Steinley has been told, doctors will assess the movement and feeling in his foot.

“Depending on what they find, they’re gonna send some electrical signals down my nerves, and see if they go all the way through. We’ll see what our options are from there.”

For now, he’s spending 95% of his day lying flat, he estimates. While he can’t stand, or put weight on his right foot, he does venture out, using a walker or wheelchair, to “try and get some sun each day.”

But he pays a price.

“If I’m out and about for an hour, I’m in quite a bit of pain for a few hours after that.”

In the meantime, he gets two visits per week from a physical therapist. In-home nurses come every day, to change his dressings, and help in other ways.

Steinley is an estimator and project manager for a construction company, but won’t be returning to work anytime soon. Under “About” on his LinkedIn profile now appear the words, “Great White Shark Wrestler.”

He expresses profound gratitude to everyone who has helped him, from his partner, Idoia, to his in-home nurses, to perfect strangers who’ve donated on the GoFundMe site, and the surfers who came to his aid in the moments after he was bitten.

After the shark released him from its jaws, Steinley still had to paddle 50 yards to shore. That’s when his adrenaline kicked in. Did he look back, during those moments, to see if the shark was closing in?

“Yes, but not very often,” he replied. “I just figured, if it wanted to take me, I wasn’t going to be able to paddle quickly enough.”

Once on shore, another surfer, Jared Davis, used a surfboard leash as a makeshift tourniquet. A firefighter who happened to be surfing nearby retrieved a first aid kit from his car, and applied an actual tourniquet.

A brigade of surfers then carried Steinley up to the road. The chopper arrived soon after.

More good news: representatives from Lib Tech, the company that made the surfboard the shark destroyed, told Steinley they’re going to send him a new one. O’Neill, the surf wear giant, will replace the wetsuit that was shredded by the great white and then cut off by first responders.

Even though he can’t yet walk, Steinley definitely intends to paddle out into the lineup again.

“It’s something to look forward to, in maybe a year,” said Steinley, who intends to start slow — “maybe go out on a longboard for a half hour or something. We’ll see.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.