*WARNING: Toward the end of the article, the uncensored picture of the injury is viewable. Discretion is advised.
Well, I guess you could say this farmer really nailed it when he was constructing a new fireplace. Unfortunately for him, though, the nails didn’t really land where 52-year-old Doug Bergeson intended for them to go.
As the carpenter was aiming the nail gun, he found himself wedged into a weird spot and suddenly the nail gun went off, accidentally double firing, sending one of the 3.5 inch nails straight into Bergeson’s heart. But the typically calm man kept his cool as usual, and checked himself out.
Bergeson describes how the nail from the nail gun found it’s way into his heart. Photo from WBAY TV-2
Bergeson said he didn’t initially feel the nail enter his body. But when he looked down, there it was, protruding from his chest through a hole in his shirt. The stoic man said he didn’t even see a drop of blood. But when he realized the nail was pulsing in time with his heartbeat, he knew it was time to get some help.
The nail that was in Bergeson’s heart measured 3.5 inches. Photo courtesy of the Bergeson family
It wasn’t all smooth-sailing. “Eight miles in it started to hurt quite a bit,” he said. After being rushed into the emergency room, Bergeson said he tried to text his wife, Donna. Not just to tell her he was hurt, but to bring him a new shirt, as well. But auto-correct, Bergeson said, let him down.
I tried to text her ‘I’m at the ER’ and it said ‘I’m at the we,’” he said.
When Donna finally made it to the ER, Bergeson said her first demand was to know how it happened. He said, ‘oops’, and shrugged his shoulders. But as Bergeson was transported to a nearby medical center which had a heart surgeon, the couple were unaware of just how close to death, he had been.
It was in recovery after the nail was removed, when the doctor sat down to explain just how lucky Bergeson was. “‘I don’t know if you know how lucky you are,’” Bergeson recalled Dr. Alexander Roitstein, saying. “The thickness of a sheet of paper was how close you came to having minutes left.’” If the nail had made contact with an artery, Bergeson said, he would have quickly bled out and his heart would have stopped in minutes.
Bergeson lays in the hospital after having accidentally shooting a nail into his heart. Photo courtesy of the Bergeson family
“A wrong heart beat, a wrong position and he would have had a much more complicated problem than he was bargaining for,” Roitstein said. “And so he’s quite fortunate from that standpoint.” For Bergeson, it was a lesson to be more careful when handling a nail gun.
And in a final touch that is fitting for this man who cracked jokes with a nail in his heart, his son Alex had a request: update Bergeson’s life insurance policy. And Alex, who had just started his new insurance job, was just the man to help his dad out. Proudly, Bergeson said, “I was his first customer.”
Source: Washington Post
