31 August,2011 07:45 AM IST | | Agencies
Hospital officials say an 86-year-old Arizona man is lucky to be alive after he accidentally impaled himself in the head with a set of pruning shears.
Leroy Luetscher was working in his garden on July 30 when he dropped a pair of pruning shears, which landed point-side down in the ground.
When Luetscher went to pick them up, he lost his balance and fell face-down on the handle.
The handle then penetrated his eye socket and went down into his neck, resting on the external carotid artery.
Luetscher was rushed to Arizona's University Medical Centre hospital, where surgeons removed the shears and rebuilt his orbital floor with metal mesh, saving his eye.
"You wouldn't believe your eyes," Dr Julie Wynne, assistant professor in the University of Arizona Department of Surgery, said of Luetscher's injuries.
"Half of the pruning shears was sticking out and the other half was in his head."
Doctors say Luetscher still has slight swelling in his eyelids and minor double vision but has otherwise recovered.
"I am so grateful to the doctors and staff at UMC," he said after emerging from surgery.
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