A Melbourne man has had his face stitched back together after he sawed it in half with a chainsaw while chopping wood on his property.
Bill Singleton, 68, is recovering in hospital after he tied his face together and drove himself to the hospital in early May.
Mr Singleton's skull (Royal Melbourne Hospital)
Doctors said it looked like "something out of a science fiction movie".
It wasn't deliberate, however -- Mr Singleton was chopping a small branch on a shrub when the chainsaw bumped on a tree trunk. The chainsaw kicked back, hitting him in the face.
"All I felt and heard was the crack of the blade going through my bottom jaw," he told Channel 7.
He couldn't call for help, having sliced his jaw in half, so wrapped his face in a towel and drove 25km to hospital.
The surgeon who led the team that fixed his face said Mr Singleton wouldn't have made it if he'd seen himself in the rear-view mirror.
"I think somewhat ignorance was the saviour of the day... and good old Aussie guts," Associate Professor Alf Nastri, head of maxillofacial surgery at the Royal Melbourne Hospital told The Age.
The surgery went well. Mr Singleton is back home already, and has no plans to give up working with chainsaws.
Newshub.
