Picture the scene: You're on an Arctic expedition. There's 12 of you, of which one has a medical backround. That person, is yourself.
Well, this is exactly the situation 27-year-old Leonid Rogozo was in on his expedition in the '60's. Unfortunately, after a short while there, he fell ill. He felt tired, he felt weak, and he had a searing pain down the right of his abdomen. Doctors of Quora, can you guess what was wrong?
Well, the answer is, he had acute appendicitis! He had no issues diagnosing himself, and normally this would be one of the simplest procedures to perform. However, unfortunately for him, he was the only person that knew what to do. He knew he was in trouble. His appendix could burst at any moment, and the ship to bring them back to civilization wasn't due for another year.
He had a choice to make, and I think you can guess what it was:
A: Die
B: Cut out his own appendix
He had to cut open his own abdomen in order to perform this, and Rogozo recalls how he wasn't even sure if that was humanly possible! Despite this, he wasn't giving up! And the next day, after much preparation, the operation began.
He injected a local anaesthetic to his abdominal wall, but once he cut through, he could feel it all. The use of anything stronger was out of the question, as he had to keep a clear head.
He was scared, but once he had injected himself and started to cut, he apparently couldn't feel a thing. He switched into 'operating mode', as he calls it, and the pressure was so high that feeling pain just wasn't an option! He actually expressed sympathy for his assistants, saying 'My poor assistants. They stood there in their surgical whites, whiter than white themselves!'
Given how difficult my major self-surgery was when I had a slightly deep splinter I needed to get out, I can imagine this was quite hard! Here he is, performing the operation:
Most impressively, he did the operation by touch! He was going to use mirrors, but he claimed the inverted view was 'too distracting'.
He thought he would fail. He was losing blood, and his consciousness was fading. He didn't fail though. After the two hour operation, he finally removed the cursed appendage, which he claimed was hours away from bursting.
Wow.
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