Guys, this thread has inspired me to come clean.
When I was 27, I was deployed to a Soviet base on Antartica in 1961 right out of medical school having finish my surgeon training. We were 12 in all, had just got set up. By March, the polar winter had set in, and we were cut-off from the outside world. In April, I began to feel ill. Very, very ill. It quickly got worse, and the pain in my gut was unbearable. My symptoms indicated acute apendicitus; I knew that if I was to survive I had to undergo an operation," the British Medical Journal recounted. "But I was in the frontier conditions of a newly founded Antarctic colony on the brink of the polar night. Transportation was impossible. Flying was out of the question, because of the snowstorms. And there was one further problem: I was the only physician on the base."
It was a bit hard using a mirror while I was weak from blood-loss and vertigo, but I barely managed to do it in about an hour and 45 minutes. I think I cried afterwards.
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 and ...
At the worst moment of removing the appendix I flagged: my heart seized up and noticeably slowed; my hands felt like rubber. Well, I thought, it's going to end badly.
Was this beta?
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ar...dix/72445/