"Do it yourself surgery" on Discovery channel

[Sis123]

dh is watching tv tonight. he knows that i am taking the pre-req.s so that i can apply to nursing school. scanning the shows on tv tonight, he sees a show on the discovery health channel, called do it yourself surgery.

pretty wild show. the vignettes are: lobsterman goes out fishing alone, and gets arm caught in lobster trap winch. has to amputate his arm, and get back to shore. next, man in australian outback is playing football, gets closed head injury, single doctor at the nearest hospital (with 11 beds and a rudimentary er) has to perform trephination with a wood drill with a bit and brace, (not an electric drill) to relieve pressure because the flying doctor is out on another call. next man is out on a sailing around the world contest (alone), and gets bursitis that gets infected from an abrasion on his elbow. he emails a doctor about it, and the doc emails him instructions on how to do surgery on his own, to relieve pressure and get the pus out, etc. next man is alone, exploring the south pole, and gets frostbite. gets back home, and the doc says we can't amputate for 5 months till the tissue that might grow back does grow back, then we'll take off the necrotic tissue. well, this man is impatient because it seems he cannot keep from "bumping" into things with the ends of his fingers, so he heads downstairs to his "shop" to proceed to put the ends of his fingers, one by one, into a vise and to saw them off. it takes him 3 days to do one finger, because the pain was too bad to do it all at once.

all of these stories are told with re-creations, down to the teeniest, gorey detail, complete with the chewed up arm in the winch, blood spurting everywhere, and greenish yellow pus squirting, to the fingers in the vise and sawing.

i thought i had seen plenty of gore in one year of nursing school (20 years ago) and in the time since then. but noooooooo!

i had to jump up and leave the room with the really gross re-creations.

has anyone seen this show? i'd love to read what real nurses (especially er nurses) have to say about the medical accuracy of this show. it was wild.

eek!

[youngRNstudent]

I JUST watched that two hours ago!!!!!!

I would say its "medically accurate".

They are real stories of real people (of course the scenes are re-enacted) but I would say it was a very good replication of the events.

I can't believe that guy with the frostbite went down and sawed off the tips of his fingers. Why did he not go to the hospital? It wasn't like any of the other vignettes where they were like 400 miles away from a hospital!

The one I thought was pretty bad was the guy w/the head trauma, and the doctor had the nurse scrub some rusted hand drill with iodine and then he proceeded to drill a hole in the guy's head to relieve the pressure!

I thought the show was amazing (but definately gory!):chuckle