Let’s face it. As medics, you deal with a lot. Occasionally, there’s the time-wasting calls from people who have no need for an ambulance.
But there’s also those moments when a patient really, really needs your help! Being on the scene at any emergency can mean anything from a broken arm to a spear in the head. Check out these amazing close calls from recent times.
1. Brazilian worker survives iron bar piercing skull
Twenty-four-year-old construction worker, Eduardo Leite was simply standing there with his hard hat on when a 6-foot metal bar fell from the fifth floor of a building, pierced through his hard hat and went through the back of his skull and exited between his eyes. Leite survived miraculously after doctors spent five hours removing it.
2. Fla. teen survives being shot in head with 3 ft. spear
Fla. teen survives being shot in head with 3 ft. spearFla. teen survives being shot in head with 3 ft. spearFla. teen survives being shot in head with 3 ft. spearFla. teen survives being shot in head with 3 ft. spearFla. teen survives being shot in head with 3 ft. spearA Fla. teen was planning on going fishing with his friend when the speargun they had with them accidentally went off and impale Yasser Lopez, 16, in the head. The spear missed all major blood vessels in Lopez’s brain, entering an inch above his right eye and going straight through his skull and sparing the speech-center of his brain. Doctors were able to remove the spear in one surgery.
3. Dante Autullo accidentally shot himself in the brain with a 3.5 inch nail and didn’t even know it. The 32-year-old thought he had just cut himself while using a nail-gun to build a shed, but when he went to the doctor to get his “cut” checked out, the nail was floating in his brain. Luckily, the nail missed the part of his brain that controls motor function by millimeters.
4. This was no laughing matter. A 30-year-old Atlanta woman swallowed a butter knife after she started laughing while demonstrating to her friends that she no longer had a gag reflex. The knife got lodged in her esophagus and she started vomiting blood. What’s even worse is that this was the second knife-swallowing for the unidentified woman, who accidentally swallowed a knife four years earlier.
5. While doing some gardening, Leroy Luetscher, 86, accidentally fell on a pair of pruning shears handles-first. The shears got embedded in his head, impaling through his eye socket and the handle penetrating down into his neck. Doctors were able to remove the shears, with Luetscher only complaining of swelling and double-vision.