A freak workplace accident left Theunis du Plessis with a steel rod passing right through his chest but an extraordinary chain of decisions helped get him home just five days later.
Western Cape, South Africa (03 September 2026) – Theunis du Plessis has apparently got nine lives. His colleague says so and after hearing what happened to him at work recently, we are not going to argue. The Cape Town mechanic survived an accident that saw a steel reinforcing rod pass right through his chest… and somehow, five days later, he was well enough to leave hospital.
It was only specialist general and vascular surgeon Dr Sanju Sobnach’s first week back in Cape Town after relocating from Johannesburg to join the Level 1 Trauma Centre at Netcare Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital when he received the call about an extraordinary penetrating injury.
Theunis, an assistant mechanic, had been hard at work when the ladder he was standing on suddenly slipped, sending him crashing onto a metal stand. A steel reinforcing rod protruding from the stand entered beneath his arm, passed through his chest and exited through his opposite shoulder.
It was one of the most complex trauma scenarios Dr Sobnach and his team had ever managed, and while the sheer extent of the injury was alarming, his first instruction was very clear: do not move the rod. Drawing on years of experience managing complex traumatic injuries, as well as previous research with Professor Andrew Nicol on retained penetrating objects, Dr Sobnach instructed the rescue teams at the scene not to move or attempt to remove the steel rod under any circumstances.
“The fire and rescue personnel and paramedics caring for Mr Du Plessis deserve enormous credit for the discipline they showed at the scene,” says Dr Sobnach. “They understood exactly what was required and followed the instructions perfectly. By the time Mr Du Plessis reached us, they had given him the best possible chance.”
While the ambulance made its way to the hospital, the trauma team was already preparing for his arrival. Dr Sobnach gathered everyone for a briefing before Theunis had even entered the unit, reminding them that despite the extraordinary sight they were about to encounter, the fundamentals of trauma care had to come first.
“The injury is imposing,” he remembers telling them. “Do not let the enormity of the task distract you from the basics, or we will lose the patient.”
And then Theunis arrived… awake, alert and remarkably composed. Despite having a steel rod passing through his body, he was able to speak to the team and open and close both hands when asked, giving doctors immediate reassurance that he had avoided devastating neurological injury.
“When I fell, I realised there was something beneath me. I tried to free myself, but I couldn’t. That’s when I realised the rod had gone right through my body. All I could do was lie there and wait for the paramedics and the fire and rescue team. They couldn’t believe I was still alive. They had to cut the rod to get me into the ambulance, but they were incredibly careful not to move it. I can still remember the hissing sound from the hole in my chest,” recalls Theunis.
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“He never panicked,” Dr Sobnach says. “He was understanding, cooperative and trusted everyone looking after him. That made an incredibly complex situation much easier to manage.”
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Cindy’s Book on "The Weight of Hope" is Set to Make Christmas Extra Special for Those in NeedThat hissing sound Theunis remembers was also an indication of just how precarious the situation remained. Every slight movement allowed air to escape through the wounds where the rod had entered and exited his body.
“It was like listening to a slow puncture in a tyre,” says Dr Sobnach.
You might imagine that the priority would be to get the steel rod out as quickly as humanly possible but the medical team knew that doing exactly the opposite could save Theunis’s life. Everything had to be planned before anyone attempted to remove it. Even getting a CT scan required some creative thinking. The rod protruding from both sides of his body meant Theunis could not lie flat inside the scanner, so he was carefully supported by pillows in a semi-seated, semi-reclined position while imaging specialists performed a CT angiogram to determine exactly where the rod had travelled.
Despite passing through his underarm and chest before exiting through the opposite upper shoulder, the rod had narrowly missed his major blood vessels.
Getting Theunis into theatre presented another challenge. Unable to lie flat, he had to be intubated while seated, with the anaesthetist taking enormous care not to disturb the rod. Once surgery began, the team again resisted the urge to simply pull it out. There was a chance that the rod itself was temporarily plugging an injured blood vessel and removing it too soon could trigger catastrophic bleeding. The surgeons exposed the injured areas and waited. Around ten minutes later, slow bleeding began, exactly as they had anticipated, giving the team the information they needed to proceed in a controlled way.
Only then was the rod slowly withdrawn in a perfectly straight line, without twisting it.
The operation unfolded exactly as planned.
After everything his body had been through, Theunis spent just one day in intensive care before being transferred to a general ward the following day. Because the steel rod was rusty, preventing infection became another important part of his recovery, with tetanus prophylaxis, antibiotics and antifungal treatment administered.
Five days after being admitted to hospital with a steel rod through his chest, Theunis was discharged.
“I’m doing well now, and I’m incredibly grateful. This is the closest I’ve ever come to dying, and I’ve had a few close calls. The rescue team was outstanding, and the team at the hospital was strict, but they were absolutely excellent. I honestly don’t think I’d be here today without them,” he says.
For Dr Sobnach, the outcome belongs to every person who played a role, beginning long before Theunis reached the operating theatre.
“It began with rescue personnel and paramedics at the mechanical workshop who understood the importance of keeping the rod completely still. It continued with careful planning before the patient even arrived at the hospital, relying on specialists from multiple disciplines working together seamlessly from the emergency department through to intensive care.”
“People often ask what makes a Level 1 Trauma Centre different. It’s not about one individual or one piece of equipment. It’s about bringing together specialist expertise at every stage of a patient’s journey. In a case like this, every decision mattered, and every team member had a critical role to play when his life was in the balance,” says Dr Sobnach.
And if you are wondering what happened to that steel rod, well, this story has one final brilliant chapter.
Theunis eventually returned to Supamac Master Mechanics carrying the very piece of steel that had impaled him. His colleague Elsabe de Villiers remembers him triumphantly arriving back at the workshop with it in hand, alive, recovering and carrying the strangest souvenir imaginable.
“Theunis has nine lives,” she says. “Just like a cat.”
She may have a point. But behind those nine lives is an extraordinary group of people who helped protect this one. From the fire and rescue personnel and paramedics who knew not to move the rod, to the trauma specialists who planned every step before taking it, this was a recovery built on expertise, teamwork and people doing their jobs exceptionally well when it mattered most.
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