Dante Autullo of Orland Park, IL, suffered a brain injury: His skull was pierced by a nail shot from a nail gun he was using. There are several amazing parts to his story, not the least of which was that he was able to post an x-ray of the nail in his head on his Facebook page before having surgery to remove it.
Autullo was building a shed and using the nail gun above his head when he fired it. At first, he thought the nail just grazed him, so he treated the wound with peroxide. Then he kept working.
The next day he felt nauseated and went to the emergency room.
An x-ray showed the 3-inch nail firmly inside his head.
As an ambulance rushed him to another hospital for surgery, he was able to post a photo of the x-ray on Facebook.
The neurosurgeon who operated on Autullo said his case was unusual, but not extremely rare.
Having a nail penetrate the skull isn’t like being shot in the head. A bullet would break into multiple pieces. This nail was thinner and pointed at the end. The skull didn’t fracture much because the nail had a small tip.
Autullo’s surgery took two hours. Part of his skull was removed to pull out the nail. The piece of skull was replaced with titanium mesh.
Now that the nail’s been removed, Autullo has bigger media plans than just posting his x-ray on Facebook. “We need to get the Discovery Channel up here to tape this,” he said after his surgery.
It’s true that nail gun injuries aren’t as rare as you might think. Click here for more on that from the Centers for Disease Control.
For safety information from OSHA on using nail guns, click here.
