I’m not very squeamish, but I don’t like looking at cuts on my own body. I’d rather have a broken bone any day because I can’t cope with the sight of an open wound on myself. A break is sore, but you usually can’t see it under the skin and that’s fine. But when I see a cut on myself, I always imagine death is not far away.
When my daughter, Vicki, was very young, she cut her knee getting out of a swimming pool. We were on holidays in Spain at the time and there was a piece of a broken tile near the edge of the pool and as she climbed out, it sliced her open. It wasn’t a pretty sight. It was very deep, and you could see the bone.
She was crying as she hobbled over to the sun bed where my wife was sitting, with blood pouring out of the wound. My wife took one look at it and promptly passed out. I wrapped a towel around the wound and carried her to reception where we did a quick patch up job. Then we got a taxi to the hospital where she was stitched up properly.
I can deal with the blood and guts stuff. Having spent over 35 years as a policeman, I got to see plenty of it, and it doesn’t bother me once it’s not mine. There was a time when I had a fear of hospitals though.
It was back in the Chernobyl days when we used to drive trucks in and out of Belarus and Western Russia. It was always a worry that one of us would require medical attention out there and many of the hospitals we visited were basic to say the least and we didn’t want to end up in one of them.
I was in the accident and emergency department in one of those hospitals once and the first thing I noticed was this poor character lying in bed on a drip. The drip was hanging from a nail that was sticking out of a piece of wood and the whole thing looked like it had just come out of a rubbish skip.
The doctors and nurses were working under terrible conditions and did their best for the patients, but we had no desire to occupy one of their beds. Considering the amount of time we spent out there over the years, we were very lucky to have had only a few minor mishaps.
My own worst experience was when I got a touch of food poisoning in Belarus and I was really feeling very ill. We were sleeping on the floor of a day care centre at the time and I was sweating profusely one miniute and frozen with the cold the next and I just wanted to die.
A little old lady who was looking after the place for the night saw me and must have guessed what was wrong. She produced a small bottle and while she hadn’t a word of English, it was obvious she wanted to spoon something into me. I was in no condition to care, so I took it and off she went.
Ten miniutes later, there was another nuclear explosion only this time it was inside my body. I hurried to the bathroom and remained there for some time and without going in to too many details, I was a lot lighter when I came out. I went off to sleep and when I woke up the following day, I was feeling a bit delicate but much improved. My new friend obviously knew what she was doing.
They’re tough people in that part of the world and one person who typifies that, is a guy by the name of Leonid Rogozov. In 1961, the 27 year-old was part of a twelve-man Russian team on an Antarctic expedition. He was the team medic and a qualified surgeon, but he fell ill, and his condition was getting worse.
He had a lot of pain down his side and he soon diagnosed that it was his appendix. He knew from experience that if he wasn’t treated properly, there was a chance he could die.
Going to hospital was out of the question. The trip from Russia had taken 35 days by boat and flying him out was impossible because of the foul weather. The only solution was to perform the surgery himself and it would have to be done without general anaesthetic because he needed to be completely awake.
He didn’t know if it was even physically possible to do this to himself, but his preference was to die trying rather than do nothing.
He gave other team members a crash course in operating theatre procedure and showed them how to revive him if he passed out. He showed them the various instruments he would be asking for and how to inject him if he required adrenalin.
He gave himself a local anaesthetic into the tummy, but the rest of the procedure had to be done without any further medication. He planned to use a mirror held by one of his assistants, but he found he was getting disoriented and so decided to carry on by feel instead. In his own account, he says that he just switched into surgeon mode and got on with the job.
He almost passed out a few times but managed to hold on until he removed the appendix but then he had to stitch himself up. The whole episode lasted for two hours and then he took some antibiotics and sleeping pills and went into a deep sleep.
He made a full recovery and returned to his normal duties just two weeks later.
Makes me look like a complete wimp.