10 People Who Survived Gruesome Accidents Against All The Odds
6. A Pain In The Neck
22-year-old Julia Popova was walking home one day when she was mugged. As her attacker grabbed her handbag, she attempted to fight him off. Shaken by the incident, she walked the 40 minutes back to her parents house in the Russian city of Moscow.
It was only when she got there, and her parents freaked the hell out, that she realised that there was a six-inch kitchen knife sticking out of the back of her neck.
During the struggle, her mugger had evidently plunged the knife into her neck, narrowly missing her spinal column (and presumably scarpering when she just kept coming at him like some sort of blonde, Russian Solomon Grundy). The shock had then kicked in, preventing Popova from feeling a thing as she made her way home.
Surgeons managed to remove the knife without causing any further damage. When the photogrpah of Juliia's injury began to circulate online (gore warning for those of you about to Google it), it was largely thought to be a fake, due to its low quality and the whole what-in-the-name-of-all-that-is-holy-is-that element of it, but it has since been confirmed as genuine by the doctors who treated her.