If you got shot in the neck and the bullet miraculously missed every major artery as well as anything else that, you know, keeps you alive, what would you do?
If you're Australian journalist Adam Harvey, you tweet about it.
Harvey, the South East Asia correspondent for ABC, was covering a conflict between ISIS and the Philippines military in the Philippines on Thursday when he was hit by a stray bullet, BuzzFeed reports.
He used Twitter to keep worried followers up-to-date about his injury.
Thanks everyone - I'm okay. Bullet is still in my neck, but it missed everything important. pic.twitter.com/PBYfdrTTa6
— Adam Harvey (@adharves) June 15, 2017
In addition to letting everyone know he was okay, Harvey also posted an intense image of his x-ray, which shows the bullet still lodged in his neck.
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Lucky. pic.twitter.com/2ZPYZfidO9
— Adam Harvey (@adharves) June 15, 2017
The image was captioned with just one word: "lucky." And he certainly was. Doctors told Harvey that the bullet stopped only one centimeter from his carotid artery, which branches off of the heart's aorta and runs through the neck up to the brain. If that artery had been hit, it's almost guaranteed that he would have died.
Harvey was flown to Manila for a surgery to remove the bullet, and the doctor immediately recognized it as an M-16 bullet from the x-ray.
"They know their slugs here," Harvey wrote in a tweet.
What a legend - Dr Emmanuel Ibay - spent an hour teasing bullet from my neck. It stopped 1cm from the carotid artery. 'Home run' if it hit. pic.twitter.com/EJfpo16TVm
— Adam Harvey (@adharves) June 16, 2017
It took an hour for the doctors to get the bullet out of his neck, and now he's keeping it as a souvenir.
Got it pic.twitter.com/uECDVZ9lw1
— Adam Harvey (@adharves) June 16, 2017
In a statement provided to ABC, Harvey's doctors said that he is expect to recover well.
Refinery29 has reached out to Harvey for comment, and will update this article if we hear back.
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