Self-surgery
-- posted January 2015 --
This is a story of a Russian doctor who while on a scientific mission on the South Pole got unbearable appendix pain. As he was the only doctor at the expedition, and a trip to the ‘closest’ hospital was not an option, he had the choice to either perform surgery on himself and remove his own appendix, or die. As you can guess, he went with the former choice.
Here is the link to the article:
http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/igy1/appendix.html
Despite its bizarreness, I find the story fascinating, because it is a story of the human’s resilience, fear, and the fight for survival.
There are several other similar, and equally bizarre, cases of self-surgery, probably the craziest one being about a woman in Mexico who had to perform a Caesarean section on herself with a kitchen knife (both her and the baby were fine).
However, if you are totally grossed out with the story, you better don’t click on the link.