Surfer Todd Murashige had just paddled eight to 10 minutes back to the Ka'a'awa shoreline Tuesday after being bitten in the thigh and ankle by a shark when he made two cell-phone calls he believes saved his life.

He was losing blood from an exposed chunk of thigh muscle that looked like "shark chum" when Murashige willed himself to stay awake and coherent.

"I told myself, 'If I black out, I'm going to die,' " Murashige said yesterday from his wheelchair at The Queen's Medical Center.

Murashige, a 40-year-old tile setter from Kane'ohe and the father of a 10-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter, paused, tears flowing, as he remembered calling his wife and mother to try and stay coherent.

His wife Heather, a teacher at Salt Lake Elementary School, did not answer her phone at first — "I didn't want to leave a message," he said — but then she called back.

Murashige told Heather he had just been bitten by a shark and did not hold back on the severity of the situation as he lay on the shore, waiting for paramedics to arrive. "I said, 'It's bad. It's really bad.' "

A few minutes earlier, around 4 p.m. Tuesday, Murashige had been waiting for a wave at Crouching Lion, one of his favorite surf spots. He was a half-mile from shore, just sitting on his 5-foot-9 Kerry Tokoro custom board, when a "grayish-brownish" shark's head emerged from the murky water, he said, and clamped around his right thigh.

At first, the pain was nothing more severe than a finger cut, Murashige said.

He said he yelled "aaagh" as he used both hands to pry open the shark's mouth, slicing his left pinky finger in the process.

Murashige, who is colorblind, did not notice any stripes indicative of a tiger shark and could not see any more of the shark's body.

But its head was 18 inches to 2 feet wide, Murashige said, spreading his hands open to display the girth.

Murashige knew that a 15-year-old boy had been bitten in the foot while bodysurfing in the same area in August 2007 by what was believed to be a 12-foot tiger shark.

Still, Murashige insisted that he never once imagined being bitten during all of his years surfing.

"You never think that you're going to be the one," he said.

A stranger, Aren Souza of Punalu'u, who also had been surfing at Crouching Lion, came to Murashige's aid, and the two paddled to shore, leaving a trail of blood in the water from "the chunk of flesh just hanging there" that used to be Murashige's healthy thigh.

All he could think about during the half-mile paddle to shore was making it to safety.

"I wanted to make sure the shark wasn't going to finish me off," he said.

Paramedics brought Murashige to the Queen's emergency room in serious condition.

"He lost a lot of blood," said Dr. Kevin Christensen, one of Murashige's orthopedic surgeons at Queen's.

Murashige believes he was bitten only once, but nerve damage to his right foot suggests there were actually two bites, Christensen said.

The wound to the thigh was the most severe and left two incisions that nearly wrapped around the entire leg of the 5-foot-4, 115-pound Murashige.

"There was a lot of muscle and tendon hanging out," Christensen said.

Christensen said Murashige will be in the hospital at least until the weekend.

"We'll look at the repair and then we'll try to get him up with therapy," Christensen said. "... This was pretty bad. But we're going to get him through it."

The wound and rehabilitation will slow his work as a tile setter, but Murashige said his medical bills will be covered by his wife's health plan.

In the meantime, Murashige has been reliving the attack over and over in his mind and doesn't know if he'll ever surf again.

"I want to get back to walking first," he said. "Maybe a couple of years. ... Until that feeling of what just happened wears off, maybe."