A South Jersey father is lucky to be alive after a horrifying backyard accident left him impaled through the face by a tree branch that pierced his brain.
Troy Hathaway, 45, was trimming branches outside his Glassboro, New Jersey, home when the ladder beneath him suddenly collapsed, sending him plunging roughly eight feet to the ground.
At first, Hathaway believed he had simply injured his jaw.
“Initially, I really thought I broke my jaw,” he recalled.
But the reality was far more terrifying.
A jagged piece of tree had entered through his cheek and nose, passed near his eye and traveled upward into his brain. X-rays later revealed the full extent of the gruesome injury.
Despite the branch protruding from his face, Hathaway remained conscious and surprisingly alert.
“I hadn’t lost consciousness, I wasn’t nauseous, I felt fine other than being a little bit sore and my ego being a bit bruised,” he said.
He was rushed to the trauma center at Jefferson Health, where stunned doctors quickly assembled a team of specialists for the delicate emergency surgery.
“This was a pretty huge piece of tree that was stuck through his face and into his brain,” neurosurgeon Dr. Chris Farrell said. “We needed to move quickly on this, but we wanted to move smart.”
Doctors initially feared they might have to open Hathaway’s skull to remove the branch. Instead, surgeons used a less invasive approach through his nasal passages, a technique sometimes used to remove brain tumors.
Incredibly, the branch had somehow missed critical blood vessels and vital brain tissue.
The surgical team was able to carefully pull it back out through Hathaway’s cheek without causing severe bleeding or permanent damage.
“Overall, a tricky thing, but it couldn’t have gone better,” Farrell said.
The operation lasted approximately four hours, but Hathaway emerged with only a few stitches and bruises. He suffered no vision problems, breathing difficulties or apparent neurological damage.
“It’s mind-boggling to think of that,” Hathaway said. “It’s emotional because it’s tough to sit there and think how close it could have been.”
Now back home with his wife and daughter, Hathaway is taking antibiotics as doctors continue monitoring him for infection.
So far, there are no warning signs, and physicians expect him to make a full recovery.
“I was so lucky to be with such an amazing surgical team,” Hathaway said. “The doctors, the whole team, are absolutely beyond words.”
