Angry in the Great White North

From the Associated Press:

War protester Cindy Sheehan was recovering in the hospital after having a hysterectomy Tuesday, her spokeswoman said.

Sheehan had surgery at Providence Health Center in Waco, about 20 miles from land she recently bought in President Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford, where her war protest has been going on the past 2½ weeks, said her spokeswoman Tiffany Burns.

Sheehan, 49, of Berkeley, Calif., is expected to be hospitalized several days and then rejoin the peace vigil. It will continue until Sept. 3, although Bush's August vacation ended earlier this month after only 10 days.

Why did she have a hysterectomy? To treat life-threatening bleeding:

Blood is the fluid of life, coursing through our veins and providing oxygen to the body.

Cindy Sheehan has just been released from a Waco hospital where she was treated for exhaustion and dehydration and was transfused after losing almost five pints of blood. This ordeal is nothing compared to the heart-shattering agony of hearing the words, "We regret to inform you," a message delivered over and over as more blood seeps into the Iraq sand each day. [emphasis added]

In case you didn't know, five pints is half the average person's blood supply. You might faint after donating one pint. You risk going into shock if you lose two pints. No one survives a loss of five pints without medical intervention.

Next question. Why did she suffer such dramatic bleeding.

We don't know.

But her situation is being used to generate sympathy for Cindy Sheehan and anger at the US government by Missy Comley Beattie of Gold Star Families for Peace in the article I quoted above.

Before being told to feel sorry for Cindy Sheehan, I'd like to know why she suffered near exsanguination. Though a hysterectomy can be used as a treatment for heavy bleeding, what happened to Cindy Sheehan is far in excess of what is normally characterized as heavy bleeding. In fact, hysterectomies are less common now as a treatment for bleeding:

Many alternatives to hysterectomy exist. For example, women with dysfunctional uterine bleeding may be treated with endometrial ablation, which is an outpatient procedure in which the lining of the uterus is destroyed with heat. Endometrial ablation will greatly reduce or entirely eliminate monthly bleeding in ninety percent of patients with DUB. In addition, uterine fibroids may be removed without removing the uterus. This procedure is called a "myomectomy." A myomectomy may be performed through an open incision or, in appropriate cases, laparoscopically. Various other techniques (such as Fibroid Artery Embolization, Myolysis, HALT, and Focused Ultrasound Surgery) kill the fibroid, and then leave it in place to be (usually only partially) reabsorbed by the body. Prolapse may also be corrected surgically without removal of the uterus.

Maybe hysterectomy was the best choice in this situation. Maybe there was a malignancy that needed to be removed. But that condition is rarely associated with catastophic hemmorhaging.

If there was dramatic and uncontrolled bleeding that was treated by removing the uterus, it stands to reason that the uterus was damaged in some way, resulting in the massive bleeding, and in turn leaving no choice but to remove the damaged organ entirely.

I've already posted my theory on the subject. I might be wrong. Some people also think I was out of line. But as long as Missy Comley Beattie is waving Cindy Sheehan's medical file like a flag to rally the troops, I think it's reasonable to ask for a closer look at that file. Their silence makes me wonder. If the cause was a ruptured cyst or a malignant tumor, the sympathy factor would increase dramatically. Cindy Sheehan does not strike me as a woman who would hesitate parading a serious illness as a means of embarrassing her political enemies. She already moans about how her fruit smoothie fast designed to bring the troops home from Iraq sooner rather than later is causing her hardship. So why the silence on the cause of the bleeding? Because, perhaps, it is politically useful to loudly announce the bleeding and the surgery, but it is recognized that the specific condition that led to that bleeding is one that would not be seen in a sympathetic light.

Especially if revealing the nature of the condition leads to even more uncomfortable questions with even more sympathy-draining answers.