Bill Singleton was just minding his own business, chopping wood on his property when seemingly out of nowhere the chainsaw he had been using popped up straight into his face. “All I felt and heard was the crack of the blade going through my bottom jaw,” he told Channel 7. Realizing that calling an ambulance was out of the question since his tongue had been sliced in half, Bill ran to his car and started driving towards the nearest hospital:
The grandfather’s fight for survival didn’t end when he pulled into the hospital car park, with the 68-year-old saying he almost passed out and had to force himself to get back up.
‘I was two thirds of the way there and things started to spin, the lights went dark… I dropped to my knees and was on all fours,’ he told the newspaper.
Mr Singleton was quickly airlifted to the Royal Melbourne Hospital, after staff looked at his wounds and saw he had cut into his face as far back as his wisdom teeth.
But luckily, the chainsaw stopped just a centimetre short of his carotid artery and larynx, according to the Herald Sun.(via)
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“It was like something out of a science fiction movie,” surgeon Professor Nastri told 3AW mornings, “If he had got that carotid artery in the paddock, the freeway of arteries, he’d probably be dead. When a chainsaw grabs, it grabs and goes deeper. It was not dissimilar to treating a gunshot wound.”
Luckily for Bill, he not only survived his chainsaw mishap, but his face doesn’t look like the absolute train wreck you’d expect after such a traumatic accident. Here he is, post-surgery:
And here he is today, not looking like a rejected extra from The Walking Dead:
Three weeks later Bill is now back at home, learning to walk again and preparing to integrate a chainsaw juggling act into his yard work (just kidding).
[H/T Daily Mail and Seven News]