31/08/2024
"The bleeding is quite heavy, but I take my time – I try to work surely." - Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov
During the 1960–61 Soviet Antarctic Expedition, a general practitioner named Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov did something quite remarkable.
Rogozov was the only doctor in the group that travelled to Antarctica in 1960. The following year, while at the remote Novolazarevskaya Station, Rogozov began feeling feverish and had pains coming from the lower right area of his abdomen. He had appendicitis, but he was the only man capable of performing the operation, and blizzards were preventing aircraft coming to the station. Rogozov, with the help of two assistants, had to remove his own appendix to save his life. In his diary, Rogozov writes:
"My poor assistants! At the last minute I looked over at them: they stood there in their surgical whites, whiter than white themselves. I was scared too. But when I picked up the needle with the novocaine and gave myself the first injection, somehow I automatically switched into operating mode, and from that point on I didn’t notice anything else."
After cutting open his abdomen, he accidentally cut the cecum and had to suture it. During the procedure, Rogozov began feeling nauseated and weak and had to take short rests, but within two hours he had successfully completed the operation. His diary records what he saw when he removed his appendix:
"With horror I notice the dark stain at its base. That means just a day longer and it would have burst". From experience he believed it would have burst with death following.
Photos in comments.
