Wild story

I was just speaking to my mother who was entertained this morning bya man who was interviewed on one of the morning shows. His story is that he shot a nail through his head with a nail gun and didn't know it. For a week. Crazy huh?

Nail gun injury more than a 'headache'
By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News
January 18, 2005

When a nail gun recoiled and crashed against his upper lip, it felt like a baseball bat slammed against his skull and brain, Patrick Lawler said Tuesday.

Actually, it was much worse than that.
Unbeknownst to Lawler, a 3 1/2-inch nail had entered his lip, driven through bone and flesh and lodged in his brain, missing his eye by millimeters.

"I had a bad headache," said Lawler, 23, of Breckenridge, at Littleton Adventist Hospital, as he described the six days he walked around unaware he had a nail in his head.

"He's a miracle baby," Lawler's wife, Katerina, 27, said of her husband.

It was Katerina who finally insisted that Patrick get an X-ray of his teeth at the dentist office where she works.

"We could see the top of the nail but we didn't know where it ended," Katerina said.

Lawler went to an oral surgeon, then to Littleton Adventist, where a CT scan and X-rays showed the entire nail in striking clarity, ramrod straight inside his head.

Dr. Sean Markey, a neurosurgeon, and Dr. Seth Reiner, an ear, nose and throat surgeon, led a large team of specialists and nurses in surgery to extract the nail on Thursday.

Lawler now sports an incision scar across the top of his head from ear to ear, necessary so doctors could peel back the flesh, drill a hole and gain access to the nail.

The nail slipped out easily after a bit of loosening, said Dr. Reiner.

The fear, said Dr. Markey, was that blood would gush once the nail was removed. But the blood flow from the from the frontal lobe of the brain was minimal and easily controlled.

The fact that the nail lodged mostly into "dead" pockets of the brain was luck, Markey said. Lawler's tolerance of the pain was his own toughness.

He's not so tough, though, that he's going back to construction work, Lawler said.

"I'm going to make pizzas," Lawler said.

That will be fine in a couple weeks, Markey said. But Lawler can't snowboard the rest of the season — his wound needs time to heal without a lot of shaking.

Lawler was installing interior walls at a new home in the Valley of the Sun subdivision in Breckenridge, when his nail gun recoiled, struck him in the mouth and launched the nail straight toward the top of his head.

"It felt like being hit by a bat or a hard piece of steel smashing your head," Lawler said. He thought it was just the force of the recoil that caused the contusion and the cut lip, because there was no sign of a nail.

He suffered blurry, double vision.

The procedure, including a stay in intensive-care probably generated a bill between $50,000 and $100,000, Markey said.

Lawler has no insurance, and he wasn't covered by worker's compensation, because he was a self-employed contractor.

"I didn't have the money for insurance, and I didn't really think I'd shoot myself with a nail."

He and his wife are seeking donations through the Patrick Lawler Fund.

"It's a problem that plagues our country," Markey said of the millions of people without health insurance. "People with high-risk jobs can't afford the cost of health care."

Lawler should recover completely and his dry sense of humor should return in a couple weeks, Markey said.

Lawler said the experience changed him. "It makes you slow down," he said. "Construction is a good job, but pretty scary."

This is the fourth nail gun accident Markey has dealt with in his career as a neurosurgeon. He said Lawler might have gotten lucky with his choice of a 16-penny nail. The big head on the nail might have stopped it from penetrating deeper into his brain.

"If you're going to be shot by a nail gun, I guess it should be 16-penny," Markey said.

from: