From his hospital bed, a 36-year-old Seaside surfer recovering from an attack by a great white shark called it “an adventure which has made life that much more precious and interesting.”

Brian Anderson, an avid surfer and entrepreneur, was hospitalized a second time since the attack Saturday, after doctors became worried the deep wound might become infected.

In frigid waters off Seaside, Anderson battled the shark alone, slugging the shark repeatedly in the nose to get it to loosen its grip. When the shark let go, Anderson swam back to shore, dragging his damaged leg behind him. Other surfers called 9-1-1 when they saw that he was dripping blood on the boulders, when he managed to pull himself onto the rocks.

“It felt like getting clamped in a bear trap,” he said. “It was a piercing pain and then it went numb.”

He was hospitalized Saturday, then released Christmas Day in time to open presents with his wife and 10-year-old son. When he returned for a checkup that evening, doctors in Seaside became troubled by the depth of the wound and the possibility of bone damage, as well as infection, and instructed him to check himself into a hospital in Portland.

While pain relievers were helping take the edge off, Anderson said every time he stands up the “blood rushes in and it feels like it’s going to blow up.” Pain aside, Anderson, who works at Surfsand Resort in Cannon Beach, described the attack as life-affirming.

In the dark water, the attack played out as he had imagined in boyhood fantasies: “I’ve always loved sharks. Ever since I was a kid, I always thought they were cool animals. And I watched a lot of shows and listened to what they say to do. I went over it in my mind. It’s like your worst nightmare,” he said.

Shows like those during the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” teach surfers to fight back, punching the shark in the nose.

“When I got the opportunity, I punched him. And the face of the shark was right there. I’m thankful it gave me the opportunity to hit it. It could have popped out of the water and gotten me much higher on my body.”

According to George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida in Gainesville, the surfer’s instincts were dead-on: “The tip of the nose is in fact the spot on sharks that is the most sensitive and we have recommended in the past that if you’re under attack that’s a good place to pop them,” he said.

There have been 490 shark attacks in the United States since 1990, of which only 11 were fatal, according to the International Shark Attack File, a compilation of data which Burgess edits.

In Seaside, the last such attack was more than two decades ago, said Fire Chief Joe Dotson.

Dotson, who was been with the department for 26 years, said it’s the first shark attack off Seaside in his time there. A more severe shark attack happened off Cannon Beach in 1979 when a surfer was severely injured.