PHOENIX — An 86-year-old Arizona man whose eye socket was impaled by pruning shears said Tuesday that he feels lucky to be alive.
Leroy Luetscher, a Wisconsin native who lives in Green Valley in southern Arizona, said he had just finished trimming plants in his backyard on July 30 when he lost his balance and fell on the pruning shears.
The tool’s handle went into his right eye socket and down into his neck, resting against the carotid artery. Luetscher said he put his hand to his face and realized the shears had gone into his eye.
“I didn’t know if my eyeball was still there or what,” he said. “I never had pain like that in all my life.”
Luetscher, whose face was gushing blood, was able to walk to his house and summon his girlfriend, Arpy Williams, who called 911.
An ambulance rushed him to University Medical Center in Tucson.
“It was a bit overwhelming,” said Dr. Lynn Polonski, one of Luetscher’s surgeons. “It was wedged in there so tightly, you could not move it. It was part of his face.”
Polonski said the team made incisions underneath his right upper lip and his sinus wall, allowing them to loosen the handle with their fingers.
“Once we were able to loosen it up, it went fairly easily,” he said.
Doctors also rebuilt Luetscher’s orbital floor with a titanium plate and put him on antibiotics. Luetscher still has slight swelling in his eyelids and minor double vision but otherwise has recovered.
