Tucson, Arizona, Aug 31: An elderly American man has survived being impaled through the eye socket by a pair of pruning shears.
Leroy Luetscher, from Green Valley in the state of Arizona, had just finished trimming plants in his back garden when he fell face-first onto his shears, sending one of the handles through his right eye socket and halfway into his head.
Luetscher managed to put his T-shirt over the wound to stanch the bleeding.
The excruciating pain kept him conscious and he was able to walk to the laundry room of his house to beckon his longtime female companion, Arpy Williams, who called for an ambulance.
Luetscher was rushed to University Medical Center in Tucson, where a team of surgeons took scans of his brain and came up with a plan to treat him.
They discovered the shears' handle had gone six inches (15 centimetres) into Luetscher's head and was resting against the carotid artery in his neck.
The team made incisions underneath his right upper lip and his sinus wall, allowing them to loosen the handle of the pruning shears with their fingers.
Doctors then rebuilt Luetscher's orbital floor with a titanium plate and put him on antibiotics for 20 days to stave off an infection that could have proved fatal.
The 86-year-old has made a remarkable recovery from the 30 July incident - he still has slight swelling in his eyelids and minor double vision, but is otherwise fine. AP
