Sunday, December 14, 2008

Don't Try This At Home (or, If You Thought Self-Experimentation Was Bad...)


Ok, I'll admit it.

I've done what might be considered minor medical procedures at home.

Minor. Very minor.

And only because I was concerned about someone's safety and didn't want to sit in Chairs (i.e., the E.R. waiting area) for hours before someone finally bothered to ask me a whole bunch of questions which would all have led to the very minor procedure I ended up doing.

But I don't think I'd be brave enough to cut off my own arm to save my life, and I certainly wouldn't be competent to take out my own appendix, even if I were stuck on Antarctica with no other physicians around (see photo, above).

Finally, here's the clincher: even with all the ferocious maternal courage and love I could muster, I think there's NO WAY on God's green EARTH that I could perform a "self-inflicted Cesarean section" even to save my own baby. Heck, I couldn't even get through normal labor without an epidural kit-wielding anesthesiologist.


Ines Ramírez Pérez did it, though, and she and her baby lived to tell the tale.


Cut her own belly open, down to the uterus, then sliced her uterus open and pulled her own baby out of it. OW. I mean, OWWWWWW.


I found these examples and a few more at ListUniverse, under "Top 10 Incredible Self-Surgeries." Have a look...it's weirdly fascinating.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! I always thought the self-surgery scene in Master & Commander was a bit far-fetched, but this is simply amazing!

Varsha said...

OUCH

Ann of the Incredible Gift said...

I can't imagine performing any of the above mentioned surgeries on myself, either.

My limit, pretty much, is removing splinters and trimming toenails.

Anonymous said...

Most of the examples I have heard of self-surgery had to do with men finding themselves in embarrassing situations trying to "self-correct" them, then "over-correcting" them and ending up in a more embarrassing situation in the ED.

broca's area said...

omg....
hats off to sampson parker and Inez Ramirez

gelci72 said...

Megan - I've heard of those "oops" examples, and of certain items from the self-mutilation spectrum that could fall into this category of events...

I think most if not all of the cases on that "Top 10" list, though, were definitely surgical procedures necessitated by circumstances beyond the patient/surgeon's control, like gi-normous bladder stones, being stranded in the Arctic with a questionable, possibly malignant tumor, etc.

Ugh...I shudder all the same...

Lisa Johnson said...

Oh. My. God.