Some moments in your life are unforgettable. Having a nail driven through your skull is, apparently, not one of them.
When a man from Elban, Russia, complained to his doctors of hearing loss, and it didn’t take long for them to ascertain the problem: a two-inch construction dowel had been lodged into his brain.
The man, whose name has been withheld from the media, says he had “forgotten about” the accident, probably because he was “drunk” when it happened while he was working on a home renovation project years prior, the UK’s Mirror reports.
Astonishingly, he claimed to have felt no pain, and had only rubbed herbal ointment on the injury at the time.
The doctors performed emergency surgery on the man, in his 30s, though they worried the operation could be fatal. The nail was just a few inches away from the major arteries which supply the brain with blood. One wrong move and he may not have survived.
Alexander Vitko, health minister of the Khabarovsk region of Russia, where Elban is located, praised ear, nose and throat surgeon Alexander Karpov, who removed the nail during a three hour operation.
“This case is unique because the man was walking around with an alien object in his head for several years.” says Vitko.
“During that time, tissue formed around the nail which, obviously, made the surgery harder.”
The lucky man is now in good health, says Vitko. “There is no threat to his life.”