04:22 PM PDT on Friday, April 21, 2006

By TERESA BELL, kgw.com Staff

An Oregon man who put a nail gun to his head and pulled the trigger twelve times survived a first-of-its-kind surgery at a Portland hospital.

KGW photo

An X-ray shows the nails lodged in the man's head.

The man went to a hospital complaining of a “small headache” the day after he tried to kill himself with the nail gun, authorities said, and doctors didn’t even see the nails at first.

But once X-rays were taken of the man’s head, doctors quickly realized it was critical to get him into surgery fast, and the patient was flown to Oregon Health and Science University for specialized treatment.

There, doctors said they peeled back the patient’s face and removed the nails with pliers and a high-speed drill.

KGW photo

A doctor shows the nails taken from the man's head.

The man, whose name was withheld for privacy reasons, is the only person to have survived a head injury involving that many foreign objects, according to hospital officials.

The man gave doctors permission to write about his injury and the surgery that saved his life in a medical journal.