A two-year-old girl from south east England narrowly escaped death after falling onto a pencil that pierced her eye and lodged into her brain.

Wren Bowell from Bath was bringing her parents a drawing when she accidentally tripped and fell face-first over a baby gate onto a pencil she had been carrying on March 13.

The pencil had gone through the toddler's right eye socket lodging an inch-and-a-half into the front lobe of her brain, but had just narrowly missing her eyeball and lodging millimeter away from a major blood vessel.

The toddler made a remarkable recovery after she was rushed to a local emergency room and later taken to Frenchay Hospital, where neurosurgeons spent four hours operating on her.

Consultant neurosurgeon Ian Pople, who operated on Wren, said that people had died or suffered permanent brain damage after suffering similar injuries as Bowell's, and added that Wren had been " incredibly lucky" to have recovered with no brain damage or ill effects on her eyesight after she was released from hospital in April 4.

"The pencil was within a millimeter of hitting a big blood vessel in the brain. She was incredibly lucky as she came out fortunately with no major bleeding," Pople told Caters. "It just skirted the top of the eye and that it didn’t damage the eyeball itself was very fortunate. She was very lucky not to have suffered any permanent damage."

Pople said that surgeons had to remove parts of Wren's skull to make sure that no flecks from the pencil remained inside of the brain by using an antibiotic wash.

"They then put her skull back together with plastic plates and screws which will biodegrade," Wren's father Martyn Bowell said, according to Caters.

Wren had spent three weeks in Frenchay hospital and she was sent home on April 4 and given anti-seizure drugs as a precaution.

"If anything happens to your child you are shocked," he said. "A broken bone would be bad enough, but something happening to the eye, head or brain is one of the worst things that could possibly go wrong," Martyn said.

"She is extremely lucky and we are very pleased that she has made such an excellent recovery," he said.

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