Self Help

Doctors, HMOs, health insurance...all nonsense! Here's some folks who

• Ines Ramirez, self C-Section. If that doesn’t make every female reading this wince, I don’t know what will! She sawed through her skin, fat and muscle with a knife and extracted the baby. Everyone ended up being fine, although she had to have surgery to fix the damage she did to her intestines.

• Dr. Leonid Rogozov, self appendectomy. Dr. R. was stationed at an Antarctic base when he discovered he was suffering from acute appendicitis. He had some people help him hold mirrors and retractors, but performed the entire surgery himself using just local anesthetic. He was back to work in two weeks.

• Sampson Parker, self amputation. Just last year, Sampson Parker was bringing in his harvest when his hand got caught in the rollers of a machine. Even worse, the machinery began to throw off sparks and caught the grass and debris on fire. He knew if he didn’t get out immediately he would die, so he sawed his arm off with his pocketknife and dropped to the ground to break the bone. He survived, and while he recovered, his neighbors harvested the rest of his corn for him.

• Dr. Jerri Nielsen, self biopsy. She was stations at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in 1999 when she found a lump in her breast. So, naturally, she performed a biopsy. The results were inconclusive; the military sent a plane with medical supplies and she performed another one. The lump was cancerous, so she started to give herself chemotherapy. When she made it back to the States, she had a mastectomy – her cancer is now in remission.

• Amanda Feilding, trepanation. I bet most of our intrepid mental_floss readers know what trepanation is, but in case you don’t, it’s when a hole is drilled through the skull to allow for better blood flow. At one point in time, it was thought to cure all kinds of ailments. Ms. Feilding thought it might work to relieve her fatigue but couldn’t find a doctor to do it, so she performed the trepanation herself. Then she went and had a steak dinner and went out for the evening.

• Joannes Lethaeus, self kidney stone removal. This is an oldie – it happened in the 1600s. He used a knife and cut a wound in his perineum, then stuck two fingers in the wound to pull the stone out, which documents say was the size of a hen’s egg. Oh. My. God.

• Aron Ralston, self amputation. You probably remember Aron – he is a mountain climber who was pinned by a boulder and trapped for five days. He amputated his right arm, which was trapped under the boulder, and then had to rappel down a cliff and hike out of the canyon to get help. He now has a prosthetic arm and still likes to mountain climb.

• Douglas Goodale, self amputation. This lobster fisherman got his hand and arm caught in a winch while out on the sea. His body was actually hanging out over the ocean, so he had to dislocate his shoulder in order to get himself back in the boat. The only way for him to free himself was to cut off his arm… so he did. Then he drove the boat back to the harbor to seek medical help. He’s fine today, and still catching lobster.

• Dr Evan O’Neill Kane, self appendectomy and hernia repair. Out to prove that general anesthesia was way overused, the good doctor removed his appendix using just local anesthetic. Then, at the age of 70, he repaired his own hernia in just under two hours.

• Deborah Sampson, self extraction of musket ball. She pretended to be a man and enlisted in the Continental Army in 1782. When she was shot, she refused to go to a hospital because she didn’t want her true sex to be discovered. So she removed the musket ball in her thigh by herself, using a penknife and a sewing needle.