The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

I wonder how this could have been worse

Tom Lehrer joked once that all the trouble in the world made him "feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis." Leonid Rogozov had appendicitis once...at the Soviet Antarctic base...and he was the only surgeon there:

Operating mostly by feeling around, Rogozov worked for an hour and 45 minutes, cutting himself open and removing the appendix. The men he'd chosen as assistants watched as the "calm and focused" doctor completed the operation, resting every five minutes for a few seconds as he battled vertigo and weakness.

"I worked without gloves. It was hard to see. The mirror helps, but it also hinders -- after all, it's showing things backwards. I work mainly by touch. The bleeding is quite heavy, but I take my time -- I try to work surely. Opening the peritoneum, I injured the blind gut and had to sew it up. Suddenly it flashed through my mind: there are more injuries here and I didn't notice them ... I grow weaker and weaker, my head starts to spin. Every 4-5 minutes I rest for 20-25 seconds. Finally, here it is, the cursed appendage! With horror I notice the dark stain at its base. That means just a day longer and it would have burst..."

Reading crap like that reminds me why (a) I never went into medicine and (b) why I never went into the wilderness without a cell phone.

Oh, the outcome? "Two weeks later, he was back on regular duty. He died at the age of 66 in St. Petersburg in 2000."

Comments are closed