Man complains of headache after driving a 12-cm nail into his head

A man called Yuri hammered a 12-cm nail into his head. He survived a ghastly experience

“The patient was brought to our hospital by ambulance, he was accompanied by his mother who told us that the man had a mental disorder and the nail had been driven into his head by himself,” says Yuri Tanvel, a doctor with neurosurgical ward of a local hospital.

Mr. Tanvel has seen patients with various head injuries before. But he never saw a nail head sticking out of the cranium. The doctor was even more surprised to find the 37-year-old patient fully conscious. Without delay, the doctors began making urgent arrangements for an operation. They x-rayed the patient's head and saw the nail going deep into the brain. The man would have died from hemorrhage if he had removed the nail by himself. The doctors had to perform a trepanation while cauterizing blood vessels of the brain. Still, they could not prevent a significant blood loss.

The doctors removed the foreign body, fixed the cranium with clamps and put a few stitches. The patient seemed safe. However, the dirt from the nail remained inside the wound. The dirt could have caused anything from purulent encephalitis to meningitis. But Yuri got off lightly again. He was released from the hospital this week. His mother still shudders recalling the day of the incident.

She saw her son trying to insert a rusty nail into his head. Blood appeared on his head. She told him to stop hurting his head with that dirty nail. He seemed to get the message. He went to the store and bought a handful of clean nails the following day. The lady found him later lying on his bed, blood on the crown of his head. The man was complaining of headache. He was after some beer to relieve the pain. His mother look a closer look and went numb. A nail was sticking out of Yuri's head.

“Had that nail slipped a millimeter to the left or right, the guy would have been dead on the spot,” say the neurosurgeons of the hospital. They believe it was a sheer miracle that no vital areas of the brain had been damaged by “foreign metallic body” that caused an oblique diametrical injury of the cranium and brain.  They decided to keep the nail. In the meanwhile, their former patient sits on the porch of his house smiling. According to Yuri's mother, the man began acting strange after a dilapidated staircase fell on his head.