A Wisconsin man who survived accidentally shooting a nail into his heart is sharing his story as a cautionary tale to others in the construction industry.
Doug Bergeson told ABC-affiliate WBAY that he was working on a fireplace at a home that he is building back in June.
“And I was kneeling, just bringing the nail gun forward and I was on my tip-toes and I just didn’t quite have enough room, and it fired before I was really ready for it, and then it dropped down and it fired again,” he said.
The second nail ricocheted off a piece of wood and struck him in his chest and straight into his heart.
“It didn’t really hurt,” he said. “It just felt like it kind of stung me.”
He told The Associated Press he initially thought the nine-centimetre framing nail had nicked his chest until he tugged at his sweatshirt and noticed that only about two centimetres of the nail was visible.
Bergeson drove himself to the emergency room 10 minutes away, he said, because “it seemed like the thing to do.”
“I felt fine, other than having a little too much iron in my diet,” he said.
In a screenshot of the text messages provided to Global News between him and his wife Donna Bergeson, he casually tells her that he’s at the hospital.
“At the we [ER]. Nail in chest. Need new shirt.”
Bergeson’s wife said the 45 minutes it took to drive to the hospital were “the longest 45 minutes of my life.”
“I didn’t expect to see what I saw when I walked in. My heart sank and I was immediately afraid of the outcome,” she told Global News. “I thank God everyday for keeping him here.”
The doctor who operated on Bergeson said the nail was a fraction of an inch – about the thickness of a piece of paper – from a major artery.
Dr. Alexander Roitstein performed the surgery on Doug Bergeson at Aurora BayCare Medical Center in Green Bay in June. Roitstein said Tuesday it was difficult to assess how deeply the nail penetrated, but said it left bruising and a hole.
“A wrong heartbeat, a wrong position and he would have had a much more complicated problem than he was bargaining for,” Roitstein told WBAY. “He’s quite fortunate from that standpoint.”
Bergeson did not suffer any permanent damage from the injury and is back to doing his favourite hobbies, like tending his vegetables at his farm.
“Must have had somebody watching over me, because it was close,” he said.
– with files from Gretchen Ehlke, The Associated Press
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