Man survives nail brain

Man survives nail brain

Nail enters brain, man lives, Texas resident Dante Autullo survived a recent brush with death after a 3 ½-inch nail accidentally lodged in his brain . Autullo successfully underwent surgery, and awoke to find his concerned family watching over him.

Dante Autullo thought his doctors were joking. The suburban Chicago man was sure he'd merely cut himself with a nail gun while building a shed. But they assured him the X-ray was real: A nail was lodged in the middle of his brain.
Autullo was recovering Friday after undergoing surgery at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where doctors removed the 3 1/4-inch (7.62-centimeter) nail. It had come within millimeters of the part of the brain that controls motor function.

“When they brought in the picture, I said to the doctor 'Is this a joke? Did you get that out of the doctors joke file?'” the 32-year-old recalled. “The doctor said 'No man, that's in your head.”'

As he was rushed by ambulance to another hospital for surgery, he posted a picture of the X-ray on Facebook.

Autullo, who lives in Orland Park, said he was building a shed Tuesday and using the nail gun above his head when he fired it. With nothing to indicate that a nail hadn't simply whizzed by his head, his longtime companion, Gail Glaenzer, cleaned the wound with peroxide.

“It really felt like I got punched on the side of the head,” he said, adding that he continued working. “I thought it went past my ear.”

While there are pain-sensitive nerves on a person's skull, there aren't any within the brain itself. That's why he would have felt the nail strike the skull, but he wouldn't have felt it penetrate the brain.

Neither he nor Glaenzer thought much about it, and Autullo went on with his day, even plowing a bit of snow. But the next day when he awoke from a nap, feeling nauseated, Glaenzer sensed something was wrong and suggested they go to the hospital.

At first Autullo refused, but he relented after the two picked up their son at school Wednesday evening.

An X-ray was taken a couple hours later. And there, seeming to float in the middle of his head, was a nail.

Doctors told Autullo and Glaenzer that the nail came within millimeters from the part of the brain that controls motor function, and he was rushed by ambulance to the other hospital for more specialized care.

“He feels good. He moved all his limbs, he's talking normal, he remembers everything,” Glaenzer said earlier Friday. “It's amazing, a miracle.”

Neurosurgeon Leslie Schaffer acknowledged that Autullo's case was unusual, but not extremely rare. Schaffer said having a nail penetrate the skull is not like being shot in the head, noting that a bullet would break into multiple pieces.

“This (the nail) is thinner, with a small trajectory, and pointed at the end,” he said. “The bone doesn't fracture much because the nail has a small tip.”

Schaffer said the man's skull stopped the nail from going farther into his brain. He said he removed the nail by putting two holes in Autullo's skull, on either side of the nail, then pulled the nail out along with a piece of the skull.

The surgery took two hours, and the part of the skull that was removed for surgery was replaced with a titanium mesh, Hospital spokesman Mike Maggio said.

Gail Glaenzer often teased accident-prone fiancé Dante Autullo about their long engagement, joking that she wanted to marry before he hurt himself too badly.

“I told him, I want to get married while your face is pretty for wedding pictures,” she said.

Thursday morning, Autullo awoke at Advocate Christ Medical Center following surgery to remove a 3½-inch nail he accidentally shot into his brain -- not even aware that he had -- while working in his Orland Park garage on Tuesday morning.