Toothache???

[silentC]

A dentist found the source of the toothache Patrick Lawler was complaining about on the roof of his mouth: a 10-centimetre nail the construction worker had unknowingly embedded in his skull six days earlier.

A nail gun backfired on Lawler, 23, on January 6 while working in Breckenridge, a ski resort town in the central Colorado mountains. The tool sent a nail into a piece of wood nearby, but Lawler didn't realise a second nail had shot through his mouth, said his sister, Lisa Metcalse.

Following the accident, Lawler had what he thought was a minor toothache and blurry vision. On Wednesday, after painkillers and ice didn't ease the pain, he went to a dental office where his wife, Katerina, works.

"We all are friends, so I thought the (dentists) were joking ... then the doctor came out and said 'There's really a nail,"' Katerina Lawler said. "Patrick just broke down. I mean, he had been eating ice cream to help the swelling."

He was taken to a suburban Denver hospital, where he underwent a four-hour surgery. The nail had plunged four centimetres into his brain, barely missing his right eye, Metcalse said.

"This is the second one we've seen in this hospital where the person was injured by the nail gun and didn't actually realise the nail had been embedded in their skull," neurosurgeon Sean Markey told KUSA-TV in Denver. "But it's a pretty rare injury."

Lawler was recovering in hospital today, where he was expected to spend several more days.

Despite his lack of medical insurance and hospital bills between $US80,000 ($104,561.5) and $US100,000 ($130,701.87), Katerina Lawler said her husband is in good spirits.

"The doctors said, 'If you're going to have a nail in the brain, that's the way you want it to be,"' she said. "He's the luckiest guy, ever."

SMH Article

How the hell do you put a 4" nail through your mouth and into your brain and not know about it? :eek: :confused:

[Termite]

How the hell do you put a 4" nail through your mouth and into your brain and not know about it?

American.

[HappyHammer]

"Patrick just broke down. I mean, he had been eating ice cream to help the swelling."

And the significance of the ice cream story is..:confused:

No sense no feeling..

[Daddles]

Lucky shot - hitting the brain that is

How long before a yank steps in and defends his countrymen?

Seriously :eek: , sounds like there's a problem with these nail guns. It's enough to put a bloke off working for a living.

Richard

[bitingmidge]

Numbskull.


P

[craigb]

How does a nail gun "backfire" ?

What do they mean by "a piece of wood nearby"?
Is that "nearby" as in directly under the gun or "nearby" as in several feet away?

Was this bloke playing silly buggers with his gun?

When does the law suit against the manufacturer start?

[silentC]

I remember working on a site once and there was this chippy. He was a nice guy but a bit slow. One day he was up a ladder fitting eave sheets. He was holding the sheet up with one hand, hanging onto the ladder with the other and he needed to tap the sheet into the joining strip. He looked around and no-one was nearby, so he gave it a few taps with his head.

I'm wondering if this guy was trying something similar, holding something in place with his head or his chin or something while he nailed it. Maybe he thought the jolt on his chin was just recoil. Who knows? He probably doesn't