Aussie Removed His Own Cyst After Waiting 2 Years

Tom Petty once sang that waiting is the toughest part, but an Australian electrician who had his own cyst removed after two years of waiting might disagree. He removed the grape-sized cyst from his own hand with a standard utility knife. An electrician claims that after getting tired of waiting for elective surgery at Canberra Hospital, he decided to take matters into his own hands and removed a painful grape-sized cyst that was interfering with his work with a utility knife. The Canberra man waited twice as long as was necessary for elective surgery in the ACT before making the desperate and potentially harmful decision to do DIY surgery, which has been severely discouraged by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and ACT Health.

Wait times should not exceed a year, and the cyst was interfering with the man's ability to work. He heated the knife, cut out the cyst, drained the internal ooze, cleaned the area, and applied a bandage after two years since he could no longer bear the wait. While acknowledging that wait times might get excruciating, doctors emphasized how fortunate the patient was that nothing worsened as a result of his actions.