Christi Barli / Florida Keys News Bureau via AP

Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad is aided after she was pulled out of the water between Cuba and the Florida Keys early Tuesday.

Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad abandoned her latest attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida early Tuesday, after being hampered by more jellyfish stings and strong overnight storms.

Angie Sollinger, a senior member of Nyad’s support team, told NBC producer Matt German that Nyad has been pulled out of the water suffering from extreme exhaustion.

The team made a collective decision to pull her out. "It was time,” Sollinger said.

She had planned to land somewhere in the Florida Keys on Tuesday, a day ahead of her 63rd birthday on Wednesday, Reuters said. But it would have taken her another 28 to 40 hours to complete the crossing at the time she finally gave up, Sollinger said.

Christi Barli / Florida Keys News Bureau via AP

Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad rests after she was pulled out of the water between Cuba and the Florida Keys early Tuesday.

After leaving the Havana shore on Sunday morning, Nyad dealt with jellyfish stings on her neck, lips, hand and forehead as well as a nasty storm that rolled in Sunday night.

Earlier, Sollinger told TODAY host Matt Lauer that the 62-year-old was deciding whether to continue her fourth attempt at crossing the Straits of Florida.

Nyad back in water in Cuba-Florida record swim try

“She’s not on the move. She’s in a holding pattern while she’s checked out.  She is under care. She experienced some jellyfish stings."

Asked who would decide whether the attempt would be abandoned altogether, Sollinger said: “That is her call, unless there is some huge challenge. Unless she’s incoherent, that’s her call.”

Nyad wanted to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. The swim has been completed once, in 1997, by Australian Susan Maroney, who was 22 and used a shark cage.

Reuters

Map showing route of Diana Nyad's attempted swim from Cuba to Florida

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Colleagues and loved ones are remembering a 50-year-old man who died while trying to save two boys in Lake Michigan as a devoted father and skilled pediatric surgeon.

Dr. Donald Liu, a father of three, was on an outing with his family in Berrian County Mich., on Sunday morning when he saw two boys struggling to swim in the lake after falling off a kayak. Liu jumped into the lake but the strong rip current below pulled him under.

The boys, who were friends of the family, made it back to land but the doctor drowned.

Liu's wife, Dr. Dana Suskind, fondly remembered her husband as a dedicated surgeon, father and husband.

"It was horrible," Suskind told the Chicago Tribune. "He had the biggest heart. He was a brilliant surgeon … but what was amazing about him was that he was the best father, that was his priority in life, and he loved me with all of his heart."

The couple, married 17 years, met at the University of Pennsylvania where Liu was a third-year surgery resident and Suskind, also a surgeon, was an intern. 

His skill for performing minimally invasive surgery and his work ethic garnered admiration from colleagues at University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital.

They said he took on the hardest cases, helping sick children with cancer and other ailments, NBCChicago.com reported.

"He was a tireless, selfless physician," said Dr. John Alverdy, executive vice chairman of the department of surgery at the university. "He'd wake up at 2 a.m. to save a child from a gunshot wound, sleep for two hours and then be back here at 6 a.m. to do rounds and elective surgeries."

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Liu joined the university in 2001 and was named chief of pediatric surgery and surgeon-in-chief at the hospital six years later. He had recently been awarded a "distinguished clinician" award.

"It lightened the atmosphere in the room and they were more open to you and all of a sudden you could see their faces light up,"  nurse practitioner Christopher Speaker said about how Liu interacted with sick children.

Read original story on NBCChicago.com

His peers echoed the same sentiment. 

"The fact that Don would save everything to save a child is what made him who he was. This doesn't surprise any of us," Liu's colleague, Dr. Jeffrey Matthews, told NBCChicago.com.

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