Doctor Swims English Channel to Help Kids Get Crucial Eye Surgery

Ioana Patringenaru | August 20, 2007

UCSD anesthesiologist Marc Lewis and his coach, David Clark. Click here for more information about 4Sight4Children.

Marc Lewis had been swimming for more than seven hours since he had left the English coast at Dover. But he was still about seven miles short of his goal, the city of Calais, on the French coastline. He knew that if he couldn’t make it in the next five hours, the tide would turn and he would have to fight it to get to shore. That would mean his swim would stretch out to a grueling 18 hours in the English Channel’s cool waters.

“I had to dig deep,” he wrote in an e-mail from England, just a few days after he completed his swim.

He thought about his two sons and his wife, who rode on the boat that followed him. He also thought about the other children he was swimming for, who desperately needed eye surgeries but couldn’t afford them. He had helped treat many of them in his more than eight years as an anesthesiologist at UCSD’s Shiley Eye Center. He now hoped to help them by using his English Channel swim to raise funds for 4Sight4Children, a charitable fund that provides eye surgery, hospital costs, lodging and transportation for families in need.

I was determined not to let them down,” he wrote.

Lewis swims during his 2006 Catalina swim, flanked by two boats.

Lewis during his 2006 Catalina swim, with one of the cayaks that followed him.

Lewis especially remembers a 6-month-old baby from Peru, who came to Shiley thanks to 4Sight4Children. Peruvian doctors told the little boy’s family that they couldn’t do anything for him and that he would be blind for the rest of his life. But his parents didn’t take no for an answer and looked for other treatment options. Finally, 4Sight4Children flew them to San Diego for six weeks. The baby underwent a cornea transplant and had follow-up visits. He was able to get back to Peru, where he is now doing well and goes to school, Lewis said.

"When you’re swimming in the ocean, you’re part of nature...You feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself."

After working with children like the little Peruvian boy, Lewis said he wanted to do more. So last year, he decided to raise funds for 4Sight4Children by swimming the English Channel. He has been swimming most of his life, he explains, and took to ocean swimming as a lifeguard in college. He said he likes the meditative state that comes over him when he immerses himself in the seas. “When you’re swimming in the ocean, you’re part of nature,” he said. “You feel like you’re part of something bigger than yourself.”

Last year, Lewis trained for 12 months to be the 121st swimmer to complete the 20.4 mile swim from Catalina Island to the California coast. To prepare for the English Channel swim, which also runs about 21 miles, he swam 15 to 30 miles per week – without a wetsuit. He started with 10 miles and added a mile every four weeks, up to 16 miles. He also trained with the UCSD Masters swimming program.

The Channel’s waters turned out to be slightly colder than Catalina’s, at about 60 degrees Fahrenheit. They also were choppier with stronger currents, as Lewis expected. But his biggest challenge turned out to be psychological, he said. He was twice told he would be able to start his swim only to be called off at the last minute because the seas were too rough and the wind was too strong. “It was an emotional roller coaster,” he said.

Finally, he got the green light and plunged into the waters without a wetsuit. His children, his wife and his coach and friend, David Clark, a Marathon Swimming Hall-of-Famer, followed him on a boat. Every 20 minutes, they attached to a pole a bottle filled with about 7 seven ounces of carbohydrate and electrolyte solutions. Lewis grabbed it, gulped it down in less than 10 seconds and went back to swimming. “If you stop for much longer than that, you start getting cold,” he said. He estimated he burns about 700 to 1000 calories an hour while swimming.

At that fateful eighth hour in his swim, Lewis picked up speed and swam hard for several hours. Within three miles of the shore, he let up just a little bit. Finally, he reached the shore after 11 hours and six minutes. He turned around, with his arms raised up to the sky, looking out at the boat and sea. He could feel the warmth of the sand at his feet and was relieved to be on French soil.

“It was a fantastic feeling to have made it,” he wrote in an e-mail.  “It was a relief. I was very tired, but not too tired to savor that moment in time.”

Lewis during his 2006 Catalina swim.