A man miraculously survived being impaled by an iron rod in a freak cherry-picking accident.
Radovan Kučera had gone to his friend’s place to collect the fruit for his daughter.
He was on a ladder picking cherries from a tree in the garden when the horror unfolded.
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Radovan, 59, was about to climb down when he reached for his fruit-filled basket at the top of the ladder.
He recalled: “At that moment, the ladder slipped or tipped over, and I fell down.”
Radovan landed sideways on a metal stake planted in the soil to support a small tree.
It went all the way through his chest cavity and came out the other side, as reported on Need To Know.
Radovan recalled: “I was lying on the ground on my right side, legs stretched out behind me, one still caught in the ladder.
“My friend and his son rushed over and immediately called for paramedics and firefighters.
“I wanted to pull out the rod myself, but fortunately, my friend talked me out of it.”
The firefighters cut the rod “on both sides with hydraulic shears so that they could get me into the ambulance,” Radovan said.
He was then taken from Vlkoš to the A&E of Olomouc University Hospital, east of Prague, Czech Republic.
The stake was removed in a gruelling emergency operation lasting five hours.
The surgical team had to open his entire pleural cavity to be able to take out the metal rod.
A shocking X-ray showed how it had gone through both Radovan’s lungs.
Luckily, it had missed his heart, aorta, trachea, oesophagus, and other vital organs by a whisker.
Surgeon Martin Kaláb said: “Mr Kučera was incredibly lucky because the rod went through his chest, the third intercostal space, pierced both lungs, and basically rested on the aorta.
“It also touched the oesophagus but didn’t perforate it.
“It narrowly missed the lung hilum, where the blood vessels enter the lungs.
“A few millimetres more, and he wouldn’t have made it.”
Radovan was finally able to return home after spending two weeks in hospital.
During his stay in the facility, he had to fight off an infection caused by rust on the rod.
After praising his saviours’ “golden hands”, he added: “If I ever pick cherries again, it will only be from a smaller tree.
“Or I’ll have someone else pick them for me.”
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