Brazilian Mateus Facio, 21, partied for four days without knowing it despite having a bullet lodged in his skull.
Facio initially thought someone had thrown a rock at his head while partying on New Year's Eve in Rio de Janeiro. "I felt like it was a small explosion, but inside my head. When the bleeding stopped, I left and went out to party," he said.
Waking up on New Year’s Day, Facio and his friends returned to the local beach for a drink. On January 2, he drove the long way to his hometown of Juiz de Fora in the neighboring state of Minas Gerais. It was only when his right arm began to twitch on January 4, nearly five days after the shooting, that he went to the hospital.
After a CT scan, doctors were horrified to discover a bullet lodged in the patient’s skull. Facio underwent a two-hour surgery and spent two more days in intensive care. He has now been discharged and is recovering at home in Juiz de Fora, southern Brazil.
X-rays show the bullet lodged in Mateus Facio's head. Photo: Mateus Facio
"The bullet penetrated the brain and compressed an area, causing the patient's arm to move involuntarily. If it had been a few millimeters away from that location, it could have caused much more serious damage, causing paralysis of the arm or part of his body," said Flavio Falcometa, the doctor in charge of the surgery.
Police took Facio's statement to investigate further about the origin of the bullet. To this day, his mother still cannot believe what her son went through. "It is incomprehensible how a person can survive with a bullet lodged in his head for four days. I feel like my son has been reborn," she said.
Facio is not the first person in the world to survive with a bullet fragment in his brain. In 2022, China reported a man who had a bullet lodged in his head for 20 years without knowing it. Xian Chen, 28, from Shenzhen, had been suffering from sporadic headaches for years. Doctors eventually discovered a bullet in his head, believed to have come from a gun he and his younger brother played with when he was 8 years old.
Thuc Linh (According to NY Post, Daily Mail )
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