Two days. That is how long a 64-year-old man spent alone in his home in Ancona, Italy, with a crossbow arrow lodged in his skull. Without eating, without drinking, without calling anyone. When they found him on Sunday morning, he was dying but conscious: eyes open, babbling incoherently.
He was taken to Torrette Hospital in Ancona, where Dr. Maurizio Iacoangeli, head of Neurosurgery, faced a case he described as extraordinary. The clinical paradox was brutal: the arrow itself was acting as a plug. Removing it without planning meant an almost certain massive hemorrhage. The fact that it was made of carbon — and not metal — made it possible to perform a CT scan with clear images and plan the operation with millimetric precision.
What saved the patient was, in part, the projectile’s trajectory: it avoided vital areas of the brain by margins that the doctors describe as incredibly fortunate. Iacoangeli spoke of brain plasticity as another key factor in the recovery. The man remains in serious condition, and the circumstances of the shooting — accident or suicide attempt — remain unclear.