Warning: Graphic Content
East2WestApparently you can get through any amount of pain if you want something badly enough, as one guy demonstrated when he walked out of a hospital with a knife in his back for a cigarette.
Just to be clear, this wasn’t your everyday, metaphorical, ‘oh they’re a back stabber’ kind of knife in the back. This man had a literal, huge blade sticking out of his body.
Vladamir, 34, was at the hospital in the Russian city of Kazan after getting wounded in a ‘drunken fight’. The exact details surrounding his injury aren’t known, but horrifically the knife was plunged so deep that only its handle was visible.
Although staff were in the midst of undressing him, the wounded man’s cigarette craving clearly got too much for him. He told the medics he ‘had something to do’, and set off on his venture.
Nurses followed him, questioning where he was going and asking ‘are you mad?’
East2WestOne protested:
It’s winter outside. Come back.
Vladamir had to grip a railing for support at one point as the pain got too much for him, but he was determined to keep going.
To try and get his nicotine fix, the patient embraced the -10C temperatures outside despite wearing nothing but underwear – though that’s definitely not the most shocking part of this story.
East2WestThe painfully cold temperatures were actually probably quite useful in numbing his wound.
Vladamir didn’t actually have any cigarettes on him and had presumably hoped to get one from another smoker outside, but his huge efforts were tragically unsuccessful.
He had to be persuaded to come back into the hospital, and only returned inside after doctors warned him he was risking his life, with one saying:
Young man, you are going to die now. Let’s go, have an injection and you go home.
He then made his way back to the treatment room as a nurse encouraged him, saying:
Yes, we’ll make one injection and let you go home. Come on, come with me. Go, go. Keep going. Go and lie down.
A spokesman from the regional health authority in Tatarstan reportedly confirmed Vladamir had undergone surgery to remove the knife, and was thankfully in a ‘stable’ condition.
Well, I suppose this story is similar to those of mothers lifting cars to save their children. Except in this case the car was a knife in the back, and the child was a cigarette.
Truly shocking!
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.