A man has survived being impaled by a tree branch while driving through a wild storm in Atlanta, Georgia.
Anthony Sotelo was driving through the storm with his wife, Laura Ballweg and their 8-year-old son on Sunday when a tree fell on their car.
"If anybody knows the movie Final Destination, we've always been paranoid of that. That is what it felt like," Ballweg told Fox affiliate WAGA-TV.
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"We were both in shock."
On a GoFundMe Page set up to help with medical expenses, Ballweg explained the family were driving through Sandy Springs, Georgia, when 'an entire tree fell down and crashed through our front window'.
"We didn’t know the severity of the damage until my husband looked down and saw he got stabbed in the stomach twice from the large branch," she said.
Sotelo pulled the branch out of his stomach while Ballweg called 911.
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They then applied pressure to the wound.
“He, I think, out of pure adrenaline ended up removing the branch–and I was just like keep pressure, keep pressure. I know that’s the first thing you’re supposed to do,” Ballweg told Atlanta News First.
Soon an ambulance arrived and rushed the father-of-one to the hospital, where he went straight into emergency surgery.
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“The surgery was intense as we learned the branch obliterated his belly button which was the entrance of the branch and it actually went through him and out on his side,” Ballweg wrote on the GoFundMe.
“Myself and my 8 year old son walked away with superficial abrasions due the glass shattering and cutting our legs.”
Ballweg later updated the GoFundMe to say the surgery was successful, but her husband would have a long road to recovery.
"The surgery went great," she said.
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"We will have emergency medical bills, and physical therapy due for payment. We ask for kindness and support through this horrible situation and appreciate all the outpouring love we have been continuously receiving.
"He's a trooper. He was making jokes the whole time. If you know my husband, that's normal. But in such a time of scariness, I can't believe that he was still so positive."
Topics: News
The LADbible Team