The three-and-a-half-inch nail entered the top of Patrick Matheson’s chest traveling at 1,400 feet per second. It pierced his trachea and esophagus, then embedded in his vertebral column.
Working at a construction site on Hinckley Lane Dec. 1, Matheson had accidentally shot himself with a nail gun.
“I couldn’t shout, but I knew I wasn’t dead,” Matheson said. “I got down off the ladder, trying to move slow and not move my neck too much.”
Still conscious as he waited for an ambulance to arrive, Matheson was unaware of just how close he had come to paralysis, or even death. His surgeons later discovered that had the nail entered his chest just a millimeter to the right, it would have severed a major artery and he would have likely bled to death at the construction site. Had the nail been just an inch longer, it would have pierced his spinal cord, leaving him a paraplegic.
Source: Jason Graziadei, The Inquirer and Mirror