A man who miraculously survived after 10,000lb of granite crashed into his face said looking in the mirror for the first time was “the worst moment of my life.”
Mike Wolo was given just a 2% chance of survival after the freak accident left his face in pieces and his eyeballs hanging out. He was placed into a coma and his family were told to say their goodbyes.
But despite the odds, he began to make a recovery after doctors rebuilt his face using 110 screws and 20 titanium plates. Seeing his reflection for the first time when he came around, he said: “I looked like Sloth from the movie The Goonies. My head was gigantic.
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“The top of my head was kind of pointed and misshapen. The left side was a lot larger than my right side. My left eye was moving around on its own…my right eye with all the blood vessels looked like a demon’s eye and my cheeks and lips were all deformed.
(Image: Mike Wolo/Theothersideoftherock.com)
“All I can remember is the horror of feeling ‘ok, life’s over.’ What woman would want to be near me? Thoughts of me getting married and having a family of my own were out the door. It was the hardest moment of my life.”
Mike from Massachusetts had reluctantly been roped into helping a friend move slabs of granite used for kitchen worktops when tragedy struck as one of the slabs came loose from the crane and swung into his face, crushing his head against a wall.
Speaking to Inside Edition he said: “We’re removing the stone one bundle at a time, the floor we noticed was buckling and moving up and down, the tractor trailer was kind of shifting around and it just didn’t feel safe.
“I kept on yelling over to my friend telling him this doesn’t feel right. He was basically like ‘stop whining, let’s just get it done.’
(Image: Mike Wolo/Theothersideoftherock.com)
“We’re down to our last few bundles and the next minute I just hear him screaming at the top of his lungs and I don’t understand why he’s screaming, I just figure he’s just yelling at us not going fast enough or something. It just surprised me.
“I see someone come running towards me and as I start to run too, I look up and see a wall of stone falling on me.
“At that point it was way too late and it came down and hit my left temple and crushed my face and head against the other bundle of stone on the other side of the container.”
As the guys on site rushed to help Mike he says they “could see inside my skull” and “I had no mouth.”
“Everybody’s just screaming and crying and assume I’m dead,” he recalls.
(Image: Mike Wolo/Theothersideoftherock.com)
“They were all taking turns holding my head back together because everything’s just wide open.
“Emergency crews just looked at me like ‘ok this guy’s done, there’s nothing to his head.'”
Mike was flown to hospital and was put into a coma. When he woke, that’s when he felt the pain.
“Everything had swelled up…my head was the size of a beach ball. I had broken my neck, fractured my vertebrae and my shoulders.
“My face was crushed and ripped off…my jaw had ripped off and broken into three…both cheekbones were destroyed, my left eye blew out to lower than where my chin would’ve been located.”
(Image: Internet Unknown)
Even though family stopped him from seeing his own face at first Mike said: “You can read people’s faces coming to visit you and see their horror reactions.
“When I did eventually see myself I was like ‘holy crap, what am I looking at?’ That was the worst moment of my life.”
But seeing his mum worry made Mike determined to survive and he fought to keep hitting milestones.
“I heard doctors say my life wasn’t going to be the same, I wasn’t going to be able to carry on being active like before and it made me even more determined to prove them wrong,” he said.
Mike’s recovery took months and he underwent intense surgery leaving him with what he describes as an “all metal face.”
(Image: Mike Wolo/Theothersideoftherock.com)
But now, 20 years on, the 52-year-old is married with two sons and while he does still suffer with some pain and discomfort, he accepts it’s “the price you pay to survive such a crazy accident.”
Now supporting other trauma survivors, he added: “You’ve got to find happiness somehow and my story gave a lot of people hope -it’s a story of trauma and tragedy with a very nice story book ending. There is life after a trauma.”
Mike’s inspirational interview, uploaded to YouTube last week attracted almost 650,000 views and reams of comments.
One viewer said: “The fact that he looks this healthy, can speak fluently and can think clearly is absolutely astonishing.”
Another wrote: “It never ceases to amaze me how the human body is both very fragile and more durable than you can ever imagine.”
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