Home builder recovering after accidentally firing nail gun into head

A Minnesota home builder who missed death by millimeters said he had to ask his friend to take a picture of his head to understand what happened when a nail wound up inches deep into his skull. Nick Thompson, who was framing a closet during the Dec. 19 accident, said he must have hit a nail already in the wood which caused the nail gun to kick back into his face, Fox 9 reported.

“This was the most freak thing that could have happened that I didn’t die from,” Thompson told Fox 9. “I don’t know what else to say other than that.”

Thompson arrived at Regions Hospital unaware that a nail was lodged in his eye and had his friend Frankie Peterson take a picture before he was rushed into emergency surgery.

“I didn’t even know I had a nail in my eye until we got to the hospital and then sitting in the chair, I was like ‘Take a picture. Take a picture,’” Thompson told Fox 9. “I moved my hand. I still didn’t think there was a nail in my eye at all.”

Surgeons removed the nail without Thompson losing sight in his eye or injuring his brain, and are monitoring for infection. He said the accident has served as a reminder to prioritize what is important in life, like his two children.

“One more millimeter and it was a lobotomy,” Thompson told Fox 9. “One more millimeter and it was poke my eye out. One more millimeter and I was dead. There are so many things that could’ve gone wrong. I don’t know how everything went right.”