Ozzy Osbourne - Trust Me, I’m Dr. Ozzy

Sometimes, though, doing it yourself is the only way to go. Like that guy who went hiking in Utah, got stuck under a rock, then had to chop off his own arm. If he hadn’t been willing to get his hands dirty, he’d still be under that rock today. Then there was the famous case of that chick in Mexico who went into labour when she was all alone and in the middle of nowhere (she lived halfway up a mountain, and her husband was down the pub). She didn’t want to risk going into labour, ’cos her last baby had been born dead, so she chugged half a bottle of rubbing alcohol, got out the kitchen knife, gave herself a C-Section, then passed out. The kid was fine… although he had a bit of a hangover. [3]

Obviously it’s unlikely you’ll ever find yourself in such a heavy duty situation. On the off-chance, though, I recommend tearing out the next few pages and keeping ’em with you at all times.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

I think my arm is broken, but I don’t have health insurance (I live in the United States) and I don’t want to end up getting a bill for thousands of dollars from a hospital emergency room. Is there a fail-safe (and painless) way to make your own plaster-cast?

Okay Stephen, this is what you have to do: get yourself down to the local Wal-Mart and buy three paper cups, some sticky-backed plastic, a pen, four knitting needles, and a ball of string. You’ll also need a lemon, some ice, and tube of toothpaste. Oh, and a bag of cement mix. Lay it all out on the kitchen table. Then take a deep breath. When you’ve done all that… GO. TO. A. DOCTOR. Honestly, are you fucking mad ? Even if you don’t have any dough, the E.R. will still treat you, and you can deal with the debt-collectors later. Trust me, your arm is going to be a lot more useful than any cash you might lose.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

If I ever had to remove my own leg in an emergency (say, I was trapped under something heavy while a long way from home, as in the movie 127 Hours), how difficult would it be?

Depends. If you had a chainsaw handy, it wouldn’t be difficult at all—apart from the screaming agony part. Also, it goes without saying that you’d have to be pretty fucking sure there were no other options before you went all-in. The last thing you’d want is go to all the bother of amputating your own leg, only for ten fire engines to pull up three minutes later. In terms of the technicalities, I can only tell you what I saw on 127 Hours : you need to make a tourniquet; saw through the skin, flesh and muscle; find a way to break the bone (or bones); then snip the tendons. Then you’ve gotta find help before dying of blood loss or infection. In other words, it’s best avoided, if at all possible.

♦ Self-circumcision with a pair of old nail clippers. A bloke in Hertfordshire tried this in 2009 and ended up in the emergency ward with a plaster cast on his knob. “This is something we would advise men never to attempt,” said the hospital. No fucking shit, man.

♦ Gastric bypass operation using a kit you bought on Amazon.com. This ain’t a joke: a company in America was actually selling “Laparoscopic Gastric Bypass Kits” on the internet until recently. It was all a big mistake, apparently: the kit was only supposed to be available to hospitals. Still, it got 38 “user reviews”—all of ’em from people taking the piss.

♦ Brain surgery. A bit of an obvious one this, I would have thought—but not to a chick in Gloucester who drilled a hole in her own head while standing in front of a mirror (with a video camera running), ’cos she’d been told it might cure “tiredness.” It all went well apart from the fact she put a big fucking hole in her head (although there can’t have been much grey matter there to begin with). Afterwards, she insisted she felt much better.

♦ Laser eyesight correction. The main problem with zapping your own eyeballs is that you need your eyeballs to make sure you’re pointing the laser at the right part of your eyeballs… it’s also pretty hard to get your hands on a reliable laser, unless you live in a volcano and answer to the name “Blofeld.” The one in your old CD player ain’t gonna do much good.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

I want to look like a celebrity but can’t afford the high cost of getting my acne scars removed by a surgeon. If I buy my own silicone on the Internet, could I simply treat the scars myself (I’ve seen how doctors on reality TV shows do the injections)?

No, no, fuck no, absolutely no way, and NO again. Times a million. I saw Neil Armstrong land on the moon on the telly, but that doesn’t mean I could pilot the Mars Rover, does it? I’ve heard terrible stories about people buying the wrong kind of silicone—like the stuff they put in car engines—and shooting themselves up with it, only to end up looking like Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street . The worst thing is, you can’t just leave it in there: someone has to cut open your face and get it out. To be honest with you, though, I’m not even sure your acne scars are the real problem. If you’re obsessed enough about your looks that you’re willing to stick a needle in yourself, there might be something else going on. In fact, I would recommend talking to a therapist, ’cos it might be that you’re suffering from some kind of negative body image disorder. I ain’t got anything against plastic surgery—I’ve had it done myself, and so has my wife—but sometimes people get way too hung up on this stuff.

Dr. Ozzy:

I crushed my finger between two heavy steel pipes: now it’s swollen and black. Do you think it’s broken?

This question isn’t as stupid as it sounds, ’cos I once broke my tibia—my shinbone—and I didn’t realise it for weeks. I thought I was just bruised or something. Mind you, I was so blasted all the time, you could have taken a chainsaw to my right arm and I probably wouldn’t have noticed. In fact, I think the reason I broke my tibia in the first place is because I was off my nut and fell down a flight of stairs. The other problem was, no-one ever used to listen to me when I complained about breaking something, because they all knew I saw it as an excuse to get my hands on some pain pills, which meant I could get even more out of my skull. I was like the boy who cried wolf, y’know? Especially when we were in America. I mean, you can’t go a doctor in the states for anything without coming away with a bottle of pills. I used to turn up at appointments with a fucking shopping trolley. And in my darkest days, I used to actually try to injure myself to get pills. Which brings me back to the question: if you’re asking me if your finger’s broken, you’re obviously not the kind of person who tries to scam your doctors, so if I were you, I’d go and get it X-rayed. Either that, or go out and play a couple of games of pool. You’ll know if it’s broken or not after that.

Dear Dr. Ozzy:

I have a corn on my right foot, and after a lot of consideration, I’m thinking of trimming it myself. Are there any risks I should know about?

Don’t do it, man. Seriously. I had a hairdresser once who got some kind of growth on his foot, so he dealt with it himself, forgot about it for years, then found out—too late—that it was cancer. The other thing you’ve gotta bear in mind is, your entire body is weighing down on that foot for most of the day, so if things go wrong in that area, it can have consequences you can’t even imagine. I mean, if you got a blow-out on your car, would you get out your little bicycle repair kit, glue the hole back together, then head out on the motoroway? No. So get yourself to a doctor—or better yet, a chiropodist.