Emergency Room Follies

Nurse, pass the claw hammer

Based on the coverage afforded to it, nail in the head seems to be America's favorite construction mishap (walkway collapse running a close second). The most recent example is from today's news cycle: construction worker Patrick Lawler's nail gun mishap that he didn't notice for six days until it was discovered in a dental X-ray. The four-inch nail barely missed his right eye as it inserted itself an inch and a half into Lawler's brain. It'd be easy to conclude that there's an epidemic of nail gun-related skull injuries by the following quote from Denver neurosurgeon Sean Markey: "This is the second one we've seen in this hospital where the person was injured by the nail gun and didn't actually realize the nail had been imbedded in their skull." While Dr. Markey claims this is a rare injury, he presents the caveat that this is merely the second time someone didn't notice.