Steve Wilder’s throat is shrunken because of radiation treatments for cancer. Although those treatments ended four years ago, scar tissue remains. Seasonal allergies sometimes cause him to struggle for breath. On the night of April 30, he fell asleep watching television in his basement but awakened when he felt himself suffocating. His wife, Cora, immediately called an ambulance.

But Wilder wasn’t waiting for the ambulance to arrive. He bolted for the kitchen, picked up a steak knife and made a quarter-inch incision in his throat. "I didn't feel no pain. I was just trying to survive," Wilder told the Associated Press in his high-pitched, gravelly voice. "I got relief right away. There was a big gush of blood, and I was able to start sucking in air."

A tracheotomy is a procedure that opens up the windpipe and is typically performed in a surgical setting. But doctors confirmed that Wilder’s DIY method was a particularly effective effort. Amazingly, Wilder then revealed that he’d performed a similar procedure on himself two years ago.

Despite the success of his impromptu operation, Wilder joked that he’s not ready to start performing tracheotomies on other people. But to his credit, he has already gone back to work and says that he is feeling good.