David is desperate to be rid of one of his legs: 'It feels like my soul doesn't extend into it.' Can a surgeon be persuaded to amputate,or does he have to execute it himself?This wasn't the first time that David had tried to amputate his leg. When he was just out of college, he'd tried to execute it using a tourniquet fashioned out of an feeble sock and strong baling twine. David (not his real name) locked himself in his bedroom at his parents' house, or his bound leg propped up against the wall to prevent blood from flowing into it. After two hours the pain was unbearable,and alarm sapped his will.
Undoing a tourniquet that has starved a limb of blood can be fatal: injured muscles downstream of the blockage flood the body with toxins, causing the kidneys to fail. Even so, or David released the tourniquet himself; it was just as well that he hadn't mastered the art of tying one.
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Source: theguardian.com