I’m an emergency doctor and woodworker. One afternoon I was working in the ED of a certain hospital where I was employed. Medics brought in a construction worker, I’ll call him Spike, on a gurney with a 3” framing nail sticking out of the center of his forehead, and buried at least an inch into his head. He was awake and talking so naturally I asked him what happened. Turns out it was the perfect storm, everything was perfectly timed simply by accident and the result was a potentially fatal injury. Spike was kneeling of the floor of a home they were framing and was measuring something and looking down. Spike hears footsteps so he looks up. Another dude was strolling along, holding a framing nailer and swinging his arm. Spike looked up, timing it perfectly to coincide with the upstroke of the nailer the dude was swinging. POW! He takes one to the forehead. So I sent Spike for a head CT which showed that the nail went thru the skin and muscle of Spike’s forehead and thru the frontal sinus. But is stopped about 2mm before it actually went thru the thin posterior wall of the frontal sinus. So I call the neurosurgeon, Dr. X who says “well the nail didn’t actually go into the cranial cavity so you can just pull out the nail and send him home”. So I says “Dr. X, this man has a 3” nail sticking out of his head, he’s scared s**tless, and you want me to tell him the neurosurgeon can’t be bothered to drop by and so much as lay eyes on him?” So the Holy Man himself came by, wasn’t sure what to pull a nail out with, but maintenance man had visegrips. Spike went home with a big bandaid. You can’t make this s**t up, we always say.
