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posted by martyb on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the VERY-stiff-upper-lip dept.

"A former soldier cut off two of his gangrene-ridden toes with a pair of tin metal pliers without anesthetic in his living room after becoming frustrated at a six-week delay to being operated on by the National Health Service (NHS)."

[...] "He says he eventually developed gangrene and his doctor said his infected toes would have to be removed. Rather than wait six weeks for the operation, Dibbins took matters into his own hands.

He says the operation, performed without pain killers and in his living room while biting on a rolled up towel, took about an hour. His wife of 40 years was in the house but says she did not want to look.

“Knowing that it would take at least another six weeks to get me in front of a surgeon again, that’s when I bit the bullet and cut off the toes,” Dibbins told the North Devon Journal.

“I did it because it’s what had to be done. My doctor told me my toes were going to kill me."

https://www.rt.com/uk/364152-gangrene-frostbite-toes-cut/


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:34PM (#420265)

    Single payer is great! I know, because it led me to do self-surgery as well!

    Nothing as radical as this - but man, the doctors were pissed off. Weeks later. When they got to me. When everything was healing up nicely.

    Then I explained why, and they were really pissed because I didn't wait in line.

    Seriously, people, what the hell?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:40PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:40PM (#420267) Journal

    Well, I just don't do lines very well. I stood in line as a young man for a physical, for uniforms, for chow, for weapons issue, for haircuts - you name it. I quit all of that. If there's a line, I go elsewhere for whatever I need.

    I don't know if I could cut off my own toes, but knowing that they were gangrenous and killing me, I just might. Six weeks is a hell of a long time to wait, while the green is spreading upwards.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:55PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:55PM (#420275)

      For me it was infection. In-growing toenails that were imbedded, and producing swelling, heat and pus. I was reliably informed that in just a few weeks (more than a month) somebody might get around to it.

      In that time I actually might have developed gangrene.

      So I did what I had to do. I took a razor, and carved my toes open. I drained the pus, cut the toenails way back, swabbed everything out with isopropyl, packed it all with antibiotic wound cream, and dressed it.

      When they finally got around to me, my toes were fine, the toenails were growing back normally, there was no sign of infection, and I asked for a medical note saying I could wear sandals.

      The doctor was so pissed off, he refused me a medical note and told me not to come back if I wasn't willing to take medical advice - not why I did it, but who cares? Not him.

      So. Yeah. Single-payer can suck me off and fluff my balls. Since then, I pay for private care and feel good doing so.

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:33PM

      by edIII (791) on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:33PM (#420343)

      Yeah, but if I was a soldier who had sacrificed for his country and it was just some rich fuckers who didn't want to pay their fair share?

      They would lose the same toes along with me, in the same surgery. Either that, or they could pay for my surgery. Whatever would happen, somebody else would losing something too.

      It's absolutely horrific how we treat soldiers, and we never learn. We're about to have another bonus army march on Washington D.C here with the National Guard soldiers too.

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:43PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:43PM (#420350) Journal
      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:53PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:53PM (#420359)

        I can broadly agree with what you're saying - the remuneration for soldiers has long been a sticking point.

        Just one thing remains:

        Please define this "fair share" thing you're talking about.

        What are its salient characteristics?

        How will we know what constitutes a "fair share"?

        What markers are available for determining what is more than a "fair share" and what is less?

        I hear about so many "fair" things in politics, but nobody seems to want to define them.

  • (Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:52PM

    by wisnoskij (5149) <reversethis-{moc ... ksonsiwnohtanoj}> on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:52PM (#420271)

    I just removed my own skin tag (it was quite a bit more than just skin). It does not compare with a toe but it was quite a bit of bleeding for a long while before it healed over enough to stop.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:57PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @09:57PM (#420277)

    I've had people sit for MONTHS with gangrene as their other conditions made surgery too risky (interesting side note- the toes fell off and we had to store it in the fridge as they had a tradition of being buried "whole").

    Yes, gangrene will kill you, but not in six weeks time.

    What we have here is a case of over-reaction by the soldier, and fearmongering about socialized medicine.

    Not to mention there are private hospitals in the UK. Can't afford it? Great! You're just like most people with private medicine.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:31PM (#420294)

      Oh, I know about the private medical options in the UK. More familiar than you might expect, even.

      But here's the problem: if you can afford private, you're a bleedin' toff who needs to be taxed harder so that everyone else can get more treatment, faster, under the exact same NHS that is growing like a cancer (seriously, take a look at its graph as a percentage of GNP, and as a percentage of revenue) and still can't tell its arse from its elbow. If you can't afford private, then you're a hapless woebegone symbol of everything that's wrong with Miserable Britain.

      The whole approach is broken, at this point.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by BasilBrush on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:59PM

        by BasilBrush (3994) on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:59PM (#420318)

        NHS spending as a percentage of GDP has been falling every year since 2010.

        The rest of what you say is shite too.

        --
        Hurrah! Quoting works now!
        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:38PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:38PM (#420346)

          Right, because the tories, bless their twisted little hearts, have tried to stem the bleeding. They didn't manage to actually reduce the NHS budget, but they sort of shuffled the money around and redefined a few things and managed to put a lid on the cauldron and sit on it for a while. If you draw the graph, they slowed the climb rather than reversed it, and if you draw any kind of moving average the net effect pretty much vanishes.

          That reinforces the point, rather than weakens it, especially since the whingeing from the imploding left increases every time anybody bothers to listen to them. Even leaving aside Corbyn's pet madhouse, the centre is full of people who appear to think that the only problem with the NHS is that there isn't more of it. We're still bombarded with the message that the toffs are vampiric monsters who should be taxed until they couldn't afford anything better than the NHS could deliver anyway, while the poor shivering proles can't get enough coal to stoke their fireplace of a winter's night.

          It's enough to make one want to move to the US.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by BasilBrush on Sunday October 30 2016, @02:08AM

            by BasilBrush (3994) on Sunday October 30 2016, @02:08AM (#420410)

            Again, NHS spending as a percentage of GDP has been falling every year since 2010. That's not "slowed the climb". That's a decreasing.

            You're still talking shite.

            --
            Hurrah! Quoting works now!
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @02:55AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @02:55AM (#420422)

              Stop hyperventilating. Read the words.

              The actual budget is not reduced; the relative budget as part of GDP is reduced, (although the budget as part of revenue is questionably reduced) and this is in an era of growth when they made a big noise about working hard to trim the NHS.

              And this is just the last government.

              And the dip relative to GDP is tiny.

              Look at the actual graph in real terms, and it's not much of a decrease unless you handpick some bizarre measure of inflation.

              But hey - what do I know? HM government's numbers must all be nonsense, right? The tories are secretly chopping the NHS down by tens of millio ... er wait, they're not? In fact, the chancellor got a lot of stick from his own backbenchers for backing away from their promise?

              Up is down! Left is right! Cats and dogs living together! Total insanity!

              ... but right, must be all that shite I'm talking.

              Boom, boom.

              • (Score: 2) by BasilBrush on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:32PM

                by BasilBrush (3994) on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:32PM (#422228)

                You brought up the measuring against SGP, tit.

                You're full of shite on your own measure.

                --
                Hurrah! Quoting works now!
      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:11PM

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:11PM (#420325) Homepage

        Speaking of growing like a cancer, what are the effects of refugees and other unskilled dead-weight on Britain's healthcare system?

        • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:14PM

          by isostatic (365) on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:14PM (#420328) Journal

          Insignificant.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @10:56AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @10:56AM (#420475)

          Speaking of growing like cancer, how'd that Iraq war turn out for you guys?

          • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday October 30 2016, @04:54PM

            by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday October 30 2016, @04:54PM (#420552) Homepage

            Pretty shitty, but then again, I was always against both the Iraq war and opening the floodgates to refugee scum.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by naubol on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:29PM

        by naubol (1918) on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:29PM (#420339)

        I found some data that does say NHS went from 3.5% from 1960 to 7.2% in 08. http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/dhtml_slides/10/blastland/img/slide3_v4.gif [bbc.co.uk]

        For the US, health spending went from 4.5% in 1960 to 17.8% in 2010. https://econographics.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/u-s-healthcare-spending-as-percentage-of-gdp/ [wordpress.com]

        It seems difficult to assert that this means the approach is wrong. The UK held costs down much better!

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by edIII on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:39PM

          by edIII (791) on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:39PM (#420347)

          Do NOT compare any health system to the one in the U.S on a financial basis. We have the most hell bound pyschotic avaricious parasites in the world. THAT's why a fucking 2c band-aid costs $4.99 a piece and an Aspirin can cost $30.

          When you compare our costs against Cuba's costs for the same medicine, keeping in mind they're under a nasty double embargo, the U.S is TWO orders of magnitude higher. We're the fucking assholes that sell $2 worth of epinephrine for $600.

          Probably better off comparing the UK against Canada or some other country that is in the top 10 for medicine. The U.S? Not anywhere near the top 20 even. We're the greatest though right? ;)

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
          • (Score: 5, Insightful) by naubol on Sunday October 30 2016, @01:24AM

            by naubol (1918) on Sunday October 30 2016, @01:24AM (#420398)

            So, don't compare a single payer approach with a market approach because the market approach is unfair due to avaricious pricing? That was sort of the point of my post. :p

            • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @04:49AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 30 2016, @04:49AM (#420436)

              The "market approach" ... excuse me while I laugh so hard I cough up a lung.

              The "market approach" - where the government decides who can decide which universities may graduate how many doctors.

              The "market approach" - where the government deliberately puts monopolies in place and refuses to do anything about them when they're abused.

              The "market approach" - where the government's sweetheart agencies and programmes can extract non-negotiable services at non-negotiable (and wildly uneconomical) rates and leave everyone else to pick up the slack as a hidden tax.

              The "market approach" - where participation is mandatory, backed with fines, and they can't even get insurers to make a profit with a captive audience more comprehensive than drivers' insurance policies have.

              The "market approach" - where actual pricing information is carefully hidden, varies wildly between customers, and is most definitely not open to bid or negotiation except where the counterparty is a large institution, or would otherwise simply default on payment.

              The "market approach" - with multiple, parallel, substantial single-payer operations in it.

              If the USA's approach is anything like a market-based approach, then maybe we need to give anarchy another try.

        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:45PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @11:45PM (#420352)

          Apples and oranges.

          But even assuming those numbers are utterly comparable on every level (they're not, but what the hell ...) that mostly reveals that when you have a market strongly constrained by a buyer with the force of law, you're apt not to get a lot of price rises.

          The situation in the USA actually fostered a whole series of abuses.

  • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:43PM

    by isostatic (365) on Saturday October 29 2016, @10:43PM (#420307) Journal

    This bloke could always have paid for private treatment, if he could afford it.