For most people, just the thought of an operation causes a nervous tic, because everyone is afraid of dying from anesthesia, medication, cardiac arrest or just some kind of force majeure on the operating table. But it's one thing when the operation is performed by professionals, and quite another when you do it yourself … Yes, yes, it happens!
1. Jean de Doute - open cystolithotomy
In 1651, the Dutchman Jean de Doute performed a cystolithotomy on his own to remove a stone from his bladder. For a long time, the huge stone was the cause of pain that Jean could no longer tolerate. However, two such operations were so painful that this time the man decided to get down to business on his own.
He sent his wife to the market, and he called his brother to help carry out the operation. While his brother held Jean's scrotum, he made an incision and with two fingers pulled out a stone the size of a chicken egg. Then he sent for a doctor to sew up the incision. After the man even covered the stone with gold, and the artist Karel Van Savoyen painted a portrait of Jean in 1655. In one hand he holds a stone, and in the other - a knife with which he performed the operation.
2. Ines Ramirez Perez - caesarean section
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In 2000, this Mexican peasant woman performed a caesarean section on herself with a kitchen knife and gave birth to a healthy boy, Orlando Ruiz Ramirez.
The fact is that when the woman's contractions began, she was at home alone, and the midwife was too far away, 80 km from the village. The contractions intensified, but labor activity was not observed - then Ines realized that something was going wrong. She drank a bottle of hard liquor, took a 15-centimeter kitchen knife and, on the third try, cut her entire belly to the ribs. Then the woman removed the baby, cut his umbilical cord and passed out. Everything about everything took an hour. Waking up, the Mexican bandaged the wound and sent one of her children for help. At the hospital, she underwent several operations, and then was discharged with her newborn son.
The woman survived because she chose the right place for the incision - she did not touch the intestines, as a result of which there was no infection.
3. Aaron Lee Ralston - amputation
Aaron Lee Ralston is an American climber who was trapped in a Utah canyon in May 2003. A boulder grasped his hand, and the young man spent 5 days and 7 hours in the trap. When all the provisions ran out, Aaron faced a difficult choice: life or death. As a result, the climber amputated his arm with a blunt Chinese knife and, having somehow coped with blood loss and traumatic shock, was able to walk many miles in the desert until he came across a group of tourists from the Netherlands, who called him a rescue helicopter.
According to his story, in 2010, the film "127 Hours" directed by Danny Boyle was shot.
4. Zheng Yaanling - amputation
47-year-old Chinese man Zheng Yaanling first began to experience pain in his leg in 2012, later doctors diagnosed him with massive arterial thrombosis of both legs, which was fraught with gangrene and loss of a limb, and doctors said that the man had no more than 3 months to live. … After a while, the pain intensified, and the man began to scream at night, preventing his neighbors and wife from sleeping.
Then he decided to amputate his leg on his own, since such an operation in a medical institution was simply beyond the reach of the Chinese. One night he took a hacksaw and a fruit knife and set about implementing his plan. By the time his wife discovered that her husband was not there, Zheng had already cut off his leg 15 centimeters from his thigh. Due to strong pressure, the hacksaw blade broke, and the man squeezed the stick wrapped in a towel with his teeth so hard that his wife found 4 more teeth that had fallen out on the table.
The amputation put an end to the pains in the right leg, which, unfortunately, cannot be said about the left, in which they became even more painful.
5. Amanda Fielding - craniotomy
In 1966, artist Amanda Fielding met the eccentric Dutchman Bart Hughes, who was studying to be a medical student at the time. March was a follower of the "Homo sapiens corrected" theory, according to which, in order to increase the blood flow to the brain and gain clarity of consciousness, it is necessary to perform craniotomy, and then use sugar in large doses for some time.
Amanda was so imbued with the ideas of Hughes, who had already become her beloved, that she decided to perform trepanation on her own, since there were no doctors who would agree to perform such an operation on a healthy person. The woman used a foot-operated dental drill for this. Later, she even made a film about this operation.
6. Leonid Rogozov - appendectomy
27-year-old surgeon Leonid Rogozov became a member of the Antarctic expedition and spent the winter at Novolazarevskaya station. Here he was the only medic. After 2 months, the man diagnosed himself with acute appendicitis, and weather conditions did not allow him to move ashore. As a result, it was decided to carry out the operation independently.
Leonid took two assistants as his assistants. Despite the presence of a mirror, the appendix had to be found by touch. Around the middle of the operation, Rogozov developed dizziness and general weakness, so he had to constantly interrupt. In general, the operation took 1 hour and 45 minutes and ended successfully.
7. Deborah Sampson - Musket Bullet Extraction
Deborah Simpson, a female soldier, was injured during the Revolutionary War. She looked so masculine that she even enlisted in the army under a male name. Deborah explained the absence of a beard to her colleagues in military affairs by her youth. The woman received many injuries, but one day, when a bullet hit her thigh, Deborah escaped from the infirmary and took it out on her own with the help of a pocket knife and a tailor's needle, as a result of which she remained disabled for the rest of her life, and her deception was revealed after 1.5 years …
8. Roland Mary - castration
In 2009, a former soldier, 61-year-old Roland Meri, was told that he would have to wait two whole years for gender reassignment surgery. Then the married father of four children realized that he could no longer live in a man's body, and one day, together with a set for surgery, he retired to the bathroom, telling his wife that he had a headache. After Roland cut off his genitals, he called his wife, shouting "Call 999 Julie, I did it!" However, the wife at first was unable to accompany the man to the hospital, as the police thought that it was she who was responsible for what happened to Roland. She was treated like a suspect, and forensic experts even examined the house.
9. Victor Yazykov - tumor removal
Viktor Yazykov is a famous Russian yachtsman who traveled many miles across endless oceans and circled the entire globe. In 1998, Victor, during the Around Alone singles race, underwent surgery to remove a tumor on his arm. As a result of one of the injuries, an abscess formed on the man's elbow, which in such cases surgeons usually open. Victor decided to do the same, but only on his own. Without reducing the speed of the yacht, looking in the mirror, he opened the tumor with a scalpel from the ship's first-aid kit, and then lost consciousness for several hours.
10. Joan Lorer (China) - removing part of a poisonous spider from the leg
This wrestler and actress had to undergo an operation to remove part of a poisonous spider from her leg in her own room, as she did not have the money to pay for the operation. The girl just went to the bathroom and cut a piece of meat out of her leg. After she said that because of the high pain threshold, she did not feel pain at all.
