Man accidentally shoots nail into his heart, and lives

A Wisconsin man working on his house accidentally shot a nail into his heart and lived to tell about it.

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Doug Bergeson was trying to finish framing up the fireplace on the home he's building.

"I was just bringing the nail gun forward and I was on my tip-toes and I just didn't quite have enough room and it fired before I was really ready for it," Bergeson said.

The three-and-a-half inch framing nail fired straight into his heart at the speed of a .22 bullet.

"It didn't really hurt. It just felt like it kind of stung me and I looked down and I didn't see anything and I put my hand there and, 'That's not good!'," Bergeson said.

He actually drove himself to the emergency room at a hospital 12 miles from the house.  Doctors there rushed him to another hospital for surgery.

The nail missed a main artery in his heart by the thickness of a piece of paper.

He now has a scar but no permanent damage.

"Must have had somebody watching over me, because it was close," Bergeson said.  "Accidents, they can happen so quickly, and fortunately this one had a good ending."

This article originally appeared on Fox 5.