Aside from the very real horror of socialized medicine, swedes can be one tough people!! I’m not at all surprised that he sewed his own leg up.
My grandmother was from Sweden and in her 90’s, deaf and almost blind, she removed her own stitches from cut she got on her nose when she tripped and fell. She stated that she didn’t need a doctor for a little thing like that.
My dad, 90 at the time, needed hernia surgery & had to go off his blood thinning pills & required daily injections for a week after surgery. So my husband & I follow Dr.’s orders and go with my father to a visit before surgery so we could learn how to give my father an injection (in his stomach!!). Well, he fussed & said he didn’t need anyone’s help & the Dr. was wasting our time.
Which was the truth.
First day we had to give him the injection, we ask if he’d be more comfortable with me or m husband giving him his shot he says “Never mind, I already did it. Told you I didn’t need any help.” So he gave himself his own shots.
(I know I could never do that, not enough Swedish blood, I guess)
A second grader at our elementary school cut his leg badly one Saturday morning. His mother wouldn’t/didn’t take him to the ER. He sewed it up by himself...with orange thread.
His silly teacher panicked Monday morning and cut the stitched loose and called the county nurse. The nurse chastized the teacher for cutting the stitches out as they could not be re-sewed and said the kid had done a pretty good job.
It upsets me, still, to think how the little boy must have felt.