- There seemed to be little hope for Isidro Mejia. Three
nails were lodged deep in his brain. Another had split his skull. Two others
were part-embedded. But just two weeks after stumbling and falling on a
construction-site colleague with a nail-gun, he is alive.
-
- Yesterday, Mr Mejia was able to speak slowly in Spanish.
Doctors said he lost most of his English-speaking skills when nails smashed
the frontal lobe of his brain. Over several days of operations, doctors
removed the nails, using X-rays as maps and a camera scope as a guide.
Even for a surgery unit used to extracting bullets and chunks of car metal
it was an incredible feat.
-
- Mr Mejia is now out of intensive care in a Los Angeles
hospital and doctors expect him to make a full recovery. "I thought
I was going to die," Mr Mejia said. "Now, I just hope to continue
my life with my family." Mr Mejia and his wife Juana, have four children.
-
- Mejia, 39, was helping build a house last month when
he fell, a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, Mark Newlands, said. The
men tried to grab each to keep their balance, but both tumbled, the nail-gun
rapid-firing. "They're extremely powerful," the deputy said.
"The guy holding the gun was grabbing to keep from falling, and just
gripped tighter on the trigger."
-
- Mr Mejia stopped breathing in the emergency room. He
was resuscitated him, but remained comatose. A team led by a neurosurgeon,
Rafael Quinonez, removed the six nails over five days. "Four of them
were embedded in his skull," a hospital spokesman said. "Another
was in his spinal column.
-
- "The neurosurgeon could not believe he was still
alive. With injuries like that, he should be dead. He is out of intensive
care and he is expected to make a full recovery."
-
- Reports say police are investigating, but they believe
it was a bizarre accident. With Dr Quinonez beside him, Mr Mejia said:
"I feel so lucky. I know I am lucky because I am alive."
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=518906
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