Sao Paulo ( CNN ) How 's this for a miraculous outcome ? A Brazilian man who was stabbed in the head during an argument survived despite the knife being lodged in his skull for over three hours . Motorcycle taxi driver Juacelo Nunes de Oliveira was at a party in a bar in the city of Agua Branca , in northeastern Piaui state , last Sunday when he got into an altercation . The 39-year-old was stabbed four times , three times in the torso , with one wound perforating a lung , and once in the head . He was first taken for treatment at a nearby hospital before being transferred to the Emergency Hospital of Teresina , a city 100 kilometers ( 62 miles ) away -- with the knife handle protruding from his head all the while . `` It took him nearly three hours to arrive here at the hospital , '' Dr. Gilberto Albuquerque , general surgeon and hospital director , told CNN on Friday . `` He had the knife lodged in his head for this whole period but he was not aware of it , '' he said . `` We believe the shock and a bit of the drinking may have helped him not to understand the knife was still in his head . '' Pictures released by the military show Oliveira lying on a hospital trolley with what looks like a kitchen knife embedded in his skull up to the handle , just to the side of his left eyebrow . According to Albuquerque , the knife stopped only when it got stuck in the man 's lower jaw . Oliveira was very lucky , he said -- and not just to be alive . `` The knife crossed his head just behind the optical nerve , got very close to the olfactory nerve and ( was ) just a fraction from the gustatory nerve . He could have been blinded and could have lost his senses of smell and taste , but none of that happened and he is alive and healthy . '' The surgery to remove the knife was very delicate , since any slip could have breached arteries and led the patient to bleed to death , Albuquerque said . It took the hospital surgery team two and half hours to complete , and was considered to be a success . `` He left the hospital yesterday , five days after coming in with a knife in his head , '' Albuquerque said . `` He is healthy and perfect and he had no ill after-effects . ''
João Nunes de Oliveira was stabbed three times in the back and once in the head . He did n't know he had a knife stuck in his head for over three hours , doctor said . The man has left him alive and well , with all his senses intact .