Three Incredible Cases of Autoamputation for Survival
What Would You Do to Survive?…
When it comes to the need to survive, most living organisms will do anything in their power to continue on and live another day. It is the nature of the human will to survive, to strive, to obtain that which empowers it and continues its existence throughout time, and this will is the ultimate nature of reality — our reality, anyways — and through it, our seemingly insatiable appetites manifest themselves. While self-preservation isn’t the sole, ultimate goal of every organism, it’s certainly up there as one of the most important facets of our existence, next to family, kinship, love, and sex. It is also the satisfaction of successive goals which keep us alive and make our lives valuable, giving these respective lives we live meaning, and imbuing a sense of purpose that keeps us going. That’s what life’s about, isn’t it? Life is about keeping on in times of adversity, when the odds are stacked against us, and challenging ourselves to go above and beyond in order to come out the other end, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Sometimes, life brings upon us the occasion when we must make tough decisions which can mean the life and death of us when faced with extreme, rare, unusual, or challenging circumstances. Here are the tales of three unbelievable people who amputated a part of their own body themselves to try to stay alive, three people who should serve as an inspiration to us all.
Disclaimer: This story is not graphic, but it does tell each person’s stories as they happened in real life, and how each of this people miraculously survived.
The Case of Aaron Ralston
Aaron Ralston was a pretty normal guy who grew up in the suburbs in Indiana, in the United States, but he always had an extremely adventurous streak, and a desire to travel and see the world. He eventually moved to the mountains of Colorado and began to climb mountains and explore, starting life as the adventurer he’d always wanted to be. Back in 2003, Aaron Ralston was climbing up in the remote wilderness of the mountains of southwestern Utah, when the unthinkable happened: Aaron was trapped in a crevice in the rocks, and pinned by a massive rock that weighed over 360 kilograms (800 pounds). The weight of the rock crushed his arm, as he lay pinned down beneath it. Aaron took photos of his bad situation (which was about to get a lot worse), as he waited for rescue teams to come to retrieve the rock so he could get out and home safe.
But those rescuers never came. Aaron waited for them for days on end, stranded and terrified, as his hope faded, and he knew he had to do something, as he laid in the helpless condition he found himself in. He was 18 meters above the floor of the canyon he found himself pinned in, and he had a pocket knife when he made what must have been one of the most difficult decisions of his life: to amputate his own arm just beneath the elbow in order to survive. Aaron cut the lower part of his arm off and then let himself down to the bottom of the canyon where he would begin to walk and search for help. Luckily, help arrived in the form of a helicopter that spotted him covered in blood. Aaron had tied off the wound to keep himself from bleeding to death pretty successfully, and would eventually make it out alive.
Ralston went on to become a motivational speaker, and continued to travel and climb mountains through the years — he didn’t let an instance that forced him into the most strenuous of circumstances, cutting his own arm off, stop him from doing what he really loved.
Aaron’s inspirational book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, can be found on Amazon, here.
The Case of Jonathan Metz
Jonathan Metz, a Connecticut man, was heating up dinner as he normally did, on a fateful night that would change his life forever, the night of June 7th, 2010. While cooking, he decided to run downstairs to fix a boiler, when somehow, suddenly, he became trapped beneath the furnace in the basement of his dwelling. Jonathan spent a terrifying12 hours screaming for help and spent a total of three days pinned underneath the furnace of the boiler.
After some time of screaming for help, when help never came, Jonathan Metz thought to himself, “What would MacGyver do in this situation?” Yes, of all things, Metz thought back to the television show MacGyver. Then, he decided to do what most of us would consider the unthinkable, and straight of out a Saw movie: he retrieved a hacksaw that had been laying nearby him the whole time and began to slowly saw his arm off with a handsaw to escape. After 3 whole days of being in this situation, coworkers were worried and had the authorities come to check on him, where he was found and rescued before he completed the amputation.
His attempt at autoamputation did save his life, however, even though he didn’t fully complete the amputation himself, and doctors finished what was left of the job later on. Doctors noted that had Metz not used the hacksaw to remove the tissues that were connected to the rest of his body, a powerful, systemic bacterial infection would have set in and killed them man within a couple of hours. By even attempting to saw off his own arm, Jonathan Metz saved his own life and was given a prosthetic arm to live out the rest of his days with.
The Case of Jon Hutt
On September 2nd of 2011, a 61-year-old Colorado man named Jon Hutt was out in the wilderness, when his 6-ton trailer (1,814 kilograms) fell onto his foot, pinning him instantly. Hutt had been loading trees into his trailer when the incident happened, in a highly remote part of western Colorado, and he acted extraordinarily quickly in order to survive. After trying to retrieve whatever cell phone reception he could find while pinned, he knew that no one was coming way out that way, and dug out his pocket knife.
Hut went straight to work and amputated his own toes with a tiny little pocket knife, a tool he had carried with him whenever in the wilderness, and managed to escape to safety. Jonathan Hutt would be returning to the wilderness to handle whatever he needed to handle in short order, being out and about only a month after the incident, and even had a good sense of humor about it all after returning to walking again after treatment.
All three of these people are their own heroes. Their stories stand as testaments to the human Will and it’s inventiveness in a tight spot, quite literally, as well as a reminder that whatever we may be going through, we can overcome — we can triumph and emerge victorious. If ordinary, everyday people can do the unthinkable to survive, so can we. We can all become extraordinary when we need to be. Their stories are also tales which may guide us through our healing and speak to us, reminding us that no matter what we’ve been through, we too can heal…and we should.
Disclosure: Thank you for reading. This article contains affiliate links as well as references, the former of which I may make a small commission from.
