“He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how’.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Late April, 1961.
Soviet Outpost, Antarctica.
The world is blank, hidden beneath endless snow and ice. A team of 12 were newly settled on the barren continent to build the Novolazarevskaya Station for the sixth Soviet Antarctic Expedition. The work was complete, but the winter was upon them. There was nothing left but to hunker down and wait out the harsh winter months before returning home. And it was here, where it seemed there was absolutely nothing to be found, that Leonid Rogozov found himself face to face with death.
There was little time to act. Leonid knew he could not let go of life without a fight- he had his “why”. What Leonid had to come to terms with, though, was the “how”. How could he survive?
When he started experiencing severe pain in his abdomen, the diagnosis was easy: acute appendicitis. It would be easily resolved with a quick and common surgery. It would be fatal without one.
Fortunately, there was a surgeon at the outpost.
Unfortunately, Leonid was that surgeon.
He was the only doctor among the twelve, in fact, and was there to provide medical attention to any members of the team who may have needed it. But how could he have expected that he was the one who would need surgery?
There was no way to leave. The winter weather was too severe to fly, and the ship they had traveled on wouldn’t be back for another year. Even if it had been sitting conveniently in the port, the journey back would take 36 days by sea. Leonid barely had 36 hours.
If he wanted to live, he had but one option: do it himself.
Leonid briefed the others on how to assist him. Anything more than a little local anesthesia was out of the question if he wanted to keep his wits about him. His colleagues started out by holding mirrors for visibility, and they handed him the instruments as he needed them. As time went on, though, the mirrors were abandoned. They were a distraction and he continued his work by touch. He worked his way through his abdomen, stopping every 20 or so seconds to breathe through the pain; he removed his intestines so that he could uncover his appendix and saw that it was already beginning to discolor.
He had acted just in time.
Leonid knew that sometimes in life there is no easy way. Caught between a rock and a hard place, or in this case, in the middle of a ton of snow, we have to make a choice. We have what seems to be an impossible “how”, but what is our “why”? Leonid knew his “why”. Leonid knew that he must live, and thus he bore the agony of “how”.
It is a story rarely known- and that is the truly unfortunate thing, since we all at some time must bear an indescribably difficult how. The odds are that it will be different in nature, but we can not guarantee whether or not it will be lesser in difficulty. What we can guarantee, however, is that there is a way through. There is, without a doubt, a way to see through any pain, any darkness, any loss, any fear, if only we can remember why we began, why we continue, why we want to- need to- succeed, and there is hardly any reminder more impactful than the one that someone else has done it before.
“Perform a medical operation on myself? I could never do something like that.” It seems only too true until we hear that it has, in fact, been done before. Then we understand that impossible is just a code word for “really difficult” and “never been done before” is only a precursor to “the first of its kind”.
About the Creator
Lucia B.
Poet
Novelist
Linguist & Aspiring Polyglot
Bibliophile
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