A Guangzhou man is lucky to be alive after a wire pierced his right eye and embedded itself deep into his brain during a construction accident, reports the Yangcheng Evening News.

Ah Wei (a pseudonym), 22 years-old, had fallen from a ladder while trying to construct a canvas rain shack in Pingshan village in Huadu District, Guangzhou on May 14.

After falling, Ah Wei continued to lay face down on the floor for three to four minutes before finally saying, “It’s no problem, I just need to rest a bit, and I’ll be fine.” It was only when his cousin Ah Hui turned Ah Wei over did he see how serious the situation was, and he notified emergency services right away.

At the hospital, it was determined that the wire had passed through the optic nerve, the eye muscle nerve, the passage to the brain stem, and the edge of brain stem before finally stopping at the back of the skull.

A five-hour operation successfully removed 18.5 cm of wire from Ah Wei’s head.

Wu Taihua, neurologist at the Guangdong Three Nine Neurology Hospital, said that Ah Wei is somewhat lucky (to put it mildly):

The welding filament missed a major vein by two millimeters, and an artery by 5 millimeters…if any one of these blood vessels were damaged, the victim would be dead at the scene.

The patient is currently in stable condition, and is conscious and lucid. At the present, Ah Wei has mobility to the right side of his body. He seems to have trouble remembering the incident, but it’s at the back of his head.

Photos: Yangcheng Evening News