Hisashi Ouchi
Morbid Curiosity 3
This article contains information regarding medical illness and details that may be disturbing to some readers. Please read with caution.
When our time comes we wish for it to be peaceful, to slip away into our sleep as our loved ones hold our hands and say goodbye. A lifetime's history behind us, a legacy to carry on, as the inevitable hands of death close our eyelids for the final time.
Advancements in medical science have let us live longer, more fulfilling lives. It can keep a heart beating where once there was no second chance, Doctors working daily miracles. But sometimes, life may be preserved to the detriment of the patient, only delaying a fate that cannot be escaped, prolonging pain to strive for recovery.
Hisashi Ouchi was one such patient. On the 30th of September 1999, nuclear power plant technician Ouchi was exposed to over double the lethal amount of nuclear radiation in a freak accident. 17 sieverts of nuclear energy were released, not through an explosion but through a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Ouchi was not the only worker exposed, though he undoubtedly received the worst fate of the bunch.
The injuries Ouchi sustained were akin to torture — his DNA and white blood cells were completely destroyed, his skin began to peel and his body was unable to heal itself. Despite this, Ouchi was resuscitated multiple times when his heart began to fail. Kept alive through blood transfusions and the sheer will of a Doctor’s medical training, Ouchi was said to cry blood and plead for mercy, stating that he was ‘not a guinea pig.’
It’s hard to say exactly why the Doctor’s tried so hard to keep him alive. Some have said it was an insensitive experiment to further their understanding of radiation injuries – perhaps in relation to the horrifying acts of Unit 731, but that’s another story for another time – other sources claim it was due to Ouchi’s family begging for the Doctor’s to do what they could to save him, the grief of losing him overpowering the trauma of seeing him suffer.
On the 83rd day of his stay in the hospital, Ouchi was finally allowed to pass, his family not asking the Doctor to resuscitate him to allow him to pass peacefully. But was it perhaps too late for that? He had been dying slowly and painfully for months. The man exposed to the most radiation ever, left in agonising pain day after day, unable to do anything aside from live as a shell of his former self. Perhaps it would have been kinder for him to have died at the site.
Thank you for reading!
If you’d like to stay up to date with this series then please do consider subscribing to me. All future entries to the series will be added to the list Morbid Curiosity, so keep an eye on that if you’d like to read more!
You can also support me as an author by using my referral link to subscribe to Medium! A portion of your subscription will go directly towards me, and is always a huge help.
Or buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/jfhadfield
