
Is it ever a good idea to perform self-surgery? - CarolineW
https://theconversation.com/is-it-ever-a-good-idea-to-perform-self-surgery-62569
======
fitzwatermellow
In her speech to the Democratic National Convention last night, Academy-Award
winner Meryl Streep gave a shout out to Deborah Sampson who disguised herself
as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army during the American
Revolutionary War. Earning the title of: "the first woman ever to take a
bullet for our country."

From wikipedia:

Sampson fought in several skirmishes. During her first battle, on July 3,
1782, outside Tarrytown, New York, she took two musket balls in her thigh and
a cut on her forehead. She begged her fellow soldiers to let her die and not
take her to the hospital, but they refused to abandon her. A soldier put her
on his horse and took her to a hospital. The doctors treated her head wound,
but she left the hospital before they could attend to the musket balls.
Fearful that her true identity would be discovered, she removed one of the
balls herself with a penknife and sewing needle, but her leg never fully
healed because the other musket ball was too deep for her to reach. On April
1, 1783, she was promoted and spent seven months serving as a waiter to
General John Paterson.

------
js8
I wonder why they don't mention
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Rogozov)
It seems like in that case, it was a good idea.

~~~
junto
I too thought it this guy. Operating on himself to remove his appendix whilst
so far from any civilisation was a seriously amazing feat of human
determination to survive.

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iamthepieman
This is insane. Medical Licensure was just starting to take form in the early
19th century. I wonder if Liston had anything to do with it.

    
    
        A notable 19th century surgeon ... Robert Liston ... is
        the only surgeon to have achieved a 300% mortality rate
        as a result of an operation ... the patient, his 
        assistant (who lost a finger while holding the patient 
        down) and an observer died. The first two from 
        infection of their wounds and the observer from fright,
         believing he had been cut when really it was only his 
        coat that had been cut.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Note that Liston was a very celebrated surgeon -- he was a professor of
surgery and developed several important procedures and tools, some of which
are still in use today. Things were a lot more speedy and dangerous before the
invention of disinfectants and general anesthesia!

------
overcast
I've cut out ingrown toenails many times. Nothing a little frontier medicine
can't handle :)

~~~
ajsdpo9
I've done the exact same thing - not worth it. I self-treated for years. It
was usually quite painful and frequently led to infection (which always healed
itself after a couple weeks). Best thing I ever did was finally go to the GP
and get it surgically taken care of. 30mins in the doctors office, less pain
that treating it myself, and it's never come back. Saying all this my health
care doesn't cost me anything but even if I had to pay, in hindsight, I would.

~~~
v64
One doesn't often get a chance to commiserate publicly about ingrown toe nail
problems, so I'm going to take the opportunity to very enthusiastically second
this. OP, go see a podiatrist ASAP. After numerous dealings with infected and
painful to walk on toes, I went through a simple in office procedure where the
podiatrist numbed my toes, snipped off the edges of the nail, then put some
chemical at the nail base so they wouldn't grow back. I haven't thought about
my toe nails since and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it's improved my
quality of life not having to deal with those issues anymore.

~~~
overcast
I just altered my trimming style of cutting too short, to leaving some actual
nail there. Problem solved.

~~~
ajsdpo9
Yeah I should've have mentioned in my original comment but obviously there are
varying degrees of this. My situation was not something I could ever fix
myself, only fix temporarily. The only solution was killing a section of the
root with a chemical.

------
Kenji
Am I mistaken or did the article not answer the question at all? It just
describes some processes, risks and examples. Most of them common knowledge of
the practical man in the 21st century.

~~~
mikeash
It does answer the question near the end:

"...given people who perform this type of surgery are often in life or death
situations, it is sometimes worth the risk."

But this seems so obvious that the question is hardly worth asking in the
first place.

------
Someone
"Less than 3 minutes" wasn't that fast for an amputation, back when surgeons
had lots of practice doing it. For example,
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Jean_Larrey)
claims _" he operated on Marshall Jean Lannes and amputated one of his legs in
two minutes."_

[http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical_instruments.htm](http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical_instruments.htm)
has pictures of instruments used and even an instruction poster from the
period. Don't try this at home, though; according to
[http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical.htm](http://www.napoleonguide.com/medical.htm),
only about a third of people who had a limb amputated survived.

------
BurningFrog
A friend of mine knocked out a wisdom tooth on himself, saving ~$1k.

Hammer and screwdriver, if I remember the story right.

~~~
ktRolster
He was lucky, that could have been a lot more expensive his way.

------
dyim
I broke my right pinky about a year ago, and splinted it up at home with the
help of a med school friend. It came in a little crooked, but I saved a few
thousand in medical bills! It's not like I need my right pinky to sell
software, play guitar, ski, or do anything fun :) .

I've always wondered if it made more sense to go to a veterinarian for broken
bones / torn muscles... I went to physical therapy for a rotator cuff issue,
and it wasn't cheap!

~~~
justbees
I also broke my right pinky and splinted it myself around 6 years ago! I
wouldn't consider that surgery, but I felt like I did the exact same thing
that they would've done in an emergency room minus getting an actual x-ray. (I
guess I can't know if it was actually broken since I didn't get an x-ray, but
the right side of my hand was completely black/purple and the pinky finger was
swollen to about the size of my thumb.)

I taped my whole hand for the first week for stability and then slowly removed
fingers from the tape as I felt like it was healing (swelling going down -
color returning to normal). After the bandages and splint were off my finger
wouldn't bend inward and it wouldn't fully straighten without applying
pressure using my other hand. I started doing my own "physical therapy" on it
whenever I had some free time to force it to straighten/bend. It took a few
months before I could bend it by itself to touch my palm but now it's about
99% functional as compared to my other pinky.

------
viach
It is like to do plumbing work by yourself. Always has unexpected and
potentially catastrophic consequences.

~~~
MustardTiger
Plumbing is super easy and very hard to mess up. There's no reason to be
messing around with copper any more: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-
linked_polyethylene](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linked_polyethylene)

------
DannyB2
I'm surprised they didn't mention Scrotum Self Repair.

[http://www.snopes.com/medical/emergent/stapled.asp](http://www.snopes.com/medical/emergent/stapled.asp)

------
theophrastus
If i had a supply of lidocaine i'd be _sore_ tempted to dig out some
superficial lumps (lipoma). There's one which removed would probably provide a
decent void for some nifty implant.

------
Kenji
One could say that woman had balls =)

~~~
sctb
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173743](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12173743)
and marked it off-topic. Please comment civilly and substantively or not at
all.

~~~
cperciva
Considering that the woman in question literally had musket balls embedded in
her thigh, I think Kenji's response is better described as a good pun than
uncivil or unsubstantive.

