Norm Coleman is already facing a tough battle against cancer, and a dangerous accident this weekend while on his boat gave him another scare.
Fighting cancer, Norm Coleman has close call when his fishing boat is broadsided
June 24, 2019 at 7:25PM
The former U.S. senator from Minnesota was fishing on Lake Ada in northern Minnesota on Saturday morning when a boat broadsided his. He ended up in the water, as did the two children on the boat. No one was injured.
"Thank God they also had on life jackets. In the end, we all survived, a little shaken, but unbloodied. Moral to the story, always wear a life jacket," he wrote in a Facebook post that included a photo of his damaged boat.
Coleman said the seat where he would normally be sitting while he trolled was crushed and the tiller sheared off.
"Had I been sitting there I would have suffered the same fate. It was only because the fish finder in the back of the boat was on the blink, that had me up on the bow trolling. Perhaps the good Lord still has things for me to do. I'm hoping that's the case," he wrote in the post.
His humor remained intact as he wrote about diving into the water: "At the moment of impact I dove into the water (I remember Tom Cruise doing something similar in Mission Impossible!)"
In August of last year, Coleman said the throat and neck cancer that he began battling in 2015 had spread to his lungs and was at the most advanced stage. In October 2015, Coleman had surgery for cancer at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester after a parched throat signaled that a squamous cell cancer in his right tonsil had spread to the lymph nodes in his neck.
In his Facebook posting on Sunday night, he wrote that he's been facing mortality quite a bit in his fight with cancer.
"I dodged a bullet this weekend. Hopefully, I'll continue to stay a couple steps ahead of the Grim Reaper. Yesterday was a powerful reminder that we don't totally control our destiny. I've been worried more about what my next scan at Mayo this week will show, than I was about the chance of something happening to me while fishing on Lake Ada. I continue to put my trust in my Maker, grateful for all the blessings I've had in my life, and hopeful that I've got more to experience. After all, I've still got a lot of fish to catch."
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None of the boat’s occupants, two adults and two juveniles, were wearing life jackets, officials said.
