Pin Head

Click here to wear Chris's x-ray on a T-Shirt!

 

DENVER (NBC) -- A Colorado man survived an incredible head wound. Back in April, a metal pin from a roto-tiller shot into the 19-year-old's brain. Chris Clear's mother, Dawn, said, "It's changed his life because of what happened." As a volunteer firefighter in Penrose, his free time was spent saving lives until the accident. He was helping a friend move a rototiller when something snapped. "At first, it just felt like a rock hit me in the face. It didn't feel like anything went into my head, just a rock hit me," said Clear. "He said, 'Do you think this is bad?' I said, 'Yea, it looks bad. I think your nose is broke.'" Chris went to St. Thomas Moore Hospital in Canon City. He says he had unbearable pain in his neck, so that's where the first x-ray focused. "They just sent him home, said it was a cervical sprain." But, the pain got worse. "It hurt real bad when I turned in either direction, leaning back, leaning forward, if I looked down it would hurt real bad. If I leaned back the pain got a lot worse," Chris said. His mother added, "If he went forward, the pin would move forward. If he would lay down the pin would sink down." It turned out that a large metal pin from the rototiller was lodged in his brain. It was that, not a rock, that hit him. Chris said, "The blunt part of it hit me right in the nose and it came back and traveled all the way to the back of my head." Twenty-four hours after the pin pierced his brain, another x-ray and a second trip to the hospital found it. "He said, 'You need to sit down.' He said, 'Chris has a metal pin in his brain.' My knees buckled and I just hit the floor," Dawn said. An ambulance rushed Chris and his mom to a Denver hospital. "Death was number one. We knew he wasn't going to come out of it. Paralysis, mobility, speech," said his mother. Luckily, the pin just missed several major arteries and after nine hours of surgery, Dawn said, "It was like we were in a movie. The double doors opened up and the doctor was holding the pin like this." Two months later, Chris is working again as a volunteer and, training to be an EMT. Dawn says, "That's the second miracle." He says he feels fine. There's not even a scar, just the pin. Chris says if you touch his scar, his front teeth go numb and, his mom says his tastes have changed. He no longer loves sweets. Luckily, those seem to be the only lasting effects.

New pictures from the surgery sent in by Chris's family: