A New Jersey dad of four prayed that he’d survive after he got impaled by a tree branch, which pierced his skull and went into his brain.

“I took some time to pray to God that the surgery was going to go well,” Troy Hathaway, 45, tells PEOPLE. He also asked that his family be looked after if “something goes wrong.”

“I thanked God for allowing it to be me,” he added, “and not any of my family.”

On July 26, the marketing director was trimming tree branches near the side of his home that he shares with his wife, Michelle, and their 4-year-old daughter, Sophie. He was about eight feet up in the air when the ladder he was standing on gave way.

While Troy doesn’t know the reason the A-frame ladder went out from underneath him, he was still conscious and able to communicate after he fell.

Initially, he thought he’d just broken his jaw.

“I immediately felt the pain, and knew I had to get into the house,” says Troy.

He knocked on the back door, and Michelle rushed to him.

“God bless her, she didn’t react to what she was seeing,” says Troy of his wife. Only later would he learn that the end of a branch — which had retained some green leaves — was poking out of the side of his face.

“She didn’t let me know exactly what was wrong,” he says of Michelle, who is a physician’s assistant at the same pulmonary practice where he works. “She’s seen it all,” he adds.

Michelle stayed calm and drove her husband to the local hospital. There, they learned that the branch was more than 12 centimeters long and behind his right eye.

“That’s the first time that I saw a slight reaction from my wife,” remembers Troy. “That was just a very quick hand up towards her mouth, in shock that it was as bad as it was.”

He was soon transferred to Jefferson Health in Philadelphia, which is when the couple learned that the piece of wood had penetrated his skull and was touching his brain.

Troy had already kissed his wife before he was taken for pre-op, but the medical team allowed her to visit with him again when the exploratory surgery was delayed. That’s when the nerves really hit and he made that urgent prayer.

“Before I knew it, my wife was back by my side,” says Troy, “and I felt a lot calmer that day when she was right by me.”

He calls it serendipitous that the team of experts who performed the surgery were able to come together so quickly.

Dr. Chris Farrell, a neurosurgeon, received the call while he was teaching his son to drive, and was able to call in Dr. Gurston Nyquist, an ENT skull base surgeon, who had just landed after flying back from San Francisco.

Together, the specialists were able to operate by going through Troy’s nose, which was minimally invasive, instead of cutting open his skull.

“When Mr. Hathaway arrived in our emergency department, it was immediately apparent to our Trauma team that he had suffered an extraordinarily severe and complex injury,” Farrell tells PEOPLE in a statement.

“After reviewing his CT scans, we recognized that this was an extremely delicate and potentially life-threatening situation,” the neurosurgeon continued, “where any misstep during removal of the branch could cause devastating bleeding, brain injury, vision loss, or serious infection.”

At Jefferson, the doctors were able to pull together an experienced surgical team and performed the operation in four hours. Both the outcome of the surgery and Troy’s recovery have been “remarkable,” Farrell said.

For Troy, there was a surge of gratitude for everyone who helped him navigate such a serious injury.

“I definitely believe that there was somebody looking out for me,” he says. “There were a lot of things that had to go right.”

Three weeks after that dangerous fall, Troy has had no side effects except for a slight reduction in taste and smell and some swelling on the left side of his face.

However, the incident left his three older children shaken — his daughters, Haley and Kyla, and son, Dawson, are from a previous relationship — and little Sophie has had a harder time understanding what happened.

“Her wording is that, ‘Daddy had a twig in his face,’ ” says Troy. “So we haven’t clarified the size with her; we’ll just let her believe it’s a twig.”