hysterectomizing 3rd world women

Body: 

Here's another article on "healing" the women of Nepal. What is striking about this entire movement is that never is mention made of cystocele/rectocele, the most common presentation of prolapse. Rather, these workers claim that hundreds of thousands of women are suffering from uterine prolapse. Something doesn't compute. A letter writing campaign is certainly in order!

Christine

What a great place for you to get research done.

You could go and work with these women and set up other teachers to teach your posture and techniques. You could have the results documented and finally the scientific evidence the medical community could not refute!

now all you need is the money, but if you figured a cost up, there are enough of us here that could sponsor it I bet.

kathy2124

Man! that was quick. I'll leave the URL and maybe it will come back up.

Kathy...I agree! I just need to find a partner (I have already asked Louise months ago) who would help coordinate contacts and logistics. Thank you for suggesting it - this situation and others like it demand the WW perspective.

:) Christine

The article is back up

Hi All

I have just read the article, and I feel weak and speechless. My head is swimming with what I have read. I feel nauseous just thinking of the suffering these Nepali women endure. Why do we keep reading of all these teams of gyns and nurses who are doing hysterectomies in the name of relieving suffering? Why Nepal, and not other places where the same thing is happening? Why hysterectomy? What about the cystoceles and rectoceles, as you point out? The proccidentia they suffer is the gruesome result of sexual inequality and sexually transmitted poverty. Until they get the political and social welfare side of it fixed they will be shooting crocodiles instead of draining the swamp! And they know it.

I am sorry but...

Swamp draining is not sexy work, but striding around in a pith helmet with a long, strong firearm that makes big bangs and cuts down crocodiles in mid-air has a certain Hollywood ring about it. It does resonate with UK Channel 4's World's Most Embarrassing Diseases. It is very confronting. These health professionals have found the money and motivation to enable them to go over there and do what they do best. No doubt there are lots of women who will be better off for their surgical intervention. Geez, when you are lying in the gutter, widowed, filthy, childless, friendless and destitute, anything is better!!!!! Maybe TV programs will be made about their work, to sell to raise money for more trips to Nepal, and we at home in front of the tele can all gawk at how awful it is, and make ourselves feel good. I dunno, Christmas is a bittersweet time. I am just feeling 'a bit negative' about it all. And very helpless, kind of like I have just come across a serious car crash and my cellphone is out of range.

Yes, these women are suffering terribly and their suffering is undoubtedly being relieved, in the same way as we read on some of the pro-surgery forums, where we read euphoric posts from women in the rich world who have just had hysterectomies. Even Nicole Farkhou says that little is being done in the name of prevention and social reform in Nepal, and the women carry the burden ... still, in more ways than one. She speaks of her concern about the medicos going home and doing no followup. She and her organisation will be left to deal with that.

I think there is more to this than jumping on a plane to Nepal and teaching women about Wholewoman posture.

I am really sorry if this seems like a cynical and cruel post. I just don't know any other way to say it. Praying that God's will be done is all I feel I can do. Praying that the medical people judge well and act out of kindness. And that the women have good outcomes. Praying that the Nepalese powers will see the need and find ways to right the injustices that these poor women suffer and praying that the rest of the world will support the people in their endeavours. And praying that voiceless people the world over will be heard and treated with compassion. And praying that Wholewoman will be heard all over the world.

Yours, feeling very guilty, small and angry.

Louise

Hi Louise,

“Nearby, a crush of 200 villagers awaits outside a dilapidated gymnasium-turned clinic. Over two days, the Nepalese medical team and its Colorado colleagues will serve 350 people, many of them women with numb and tingling arms or chronic back pain from compressed discs, and skin and teeth problems from poor hygiene and undernourishment...Meanwhile, down the road, an elderly woman with matted hair, bare feet and soiled clothes lies asleep in a roadside ditch, villagers stepping over her unfazed. When awoken by a stranger, she explains through tears: She is recently widowed and has no children. So she begs for food and sleeps outside. ‘If you have no children you are nothing here’, she says in Nepalese. ‘No one cares for you.’”

This is the center of the storm, there is no doubt. Yet, the storm rages all across the planet - even here as we step over more and more of our own grandmothers lying on the streets. The inequality that exists in the world is nothing less than shattering. I agree, Louise, there is nothing to be done about that at the moment.

However, the Gigantic Fallacy is that surgically removing the central support structure of these women’s bodies is going to improve their conditions one iota!

*Hysterectomized women are incapacitated women*

In the West, post-hysterectomy women can carry on living seemingly normal lives because they are supported by a tremendous level of luxury, convenience, and medical care. Even so, the gynecologic literature states that the re-operation rate in these women is 30%! If the Nepali women were ostracized because of vaginal bulges - imagine how they will be treated once they become incapacitated with the basketball-size balloon of post-hyst vault prolapse! It is heartbreaking enough reading about the countless post-surgery Western women who are enduring great suffering trying to continue on with lidocaine-laced sex to appease their husbands. Their sisters in Nepal may simply have no choice but to die.

Let’s be very clear that in no way is information given that these natural prolapse conditions are in any way life-threatening. Rather, it is explained that uterine prolapse is:

“a gruesome, otherwise fairly rare condition in which the uterus falls below the pelvic floor -- hanging outside the body in severe cases -- interfering with sitting, walking and intercourse, and inviting infection.”
“Inviting infection” is an opinion, not a fact, and the article does not mention one case of fever or acuity.

It is very important to realize that we live in a hysterectomized society. One third of our women are walking around without their center of gravity. Hysterectomy at a young age brings about tremendous suffering in women, even though that suffering is denied by many. Nora Coffey (in our upcoming dvd) talks fascinatingly about the dark side of human nature that allows that sort of denial.

Where are the orthopedic surgeons performing laminectomies for all the “compressed discs” in Nepali women? There are none, because it is common sense that back surgery would not improve these women’s health or lives.

This is not a humanitarian effort, but the blind determination of a male-centered Western medical practice that does not serve women well.

Christine

I have been off line for a few days, and I just stumbled onto this article.

I would like to know what you would do if you were dealing with a women who did have a 4th degree prolapse where the entire uterus was out side of the body, not just part. I have seen some videos of this scenario and all though I am not pro hyst I do not know what you could do in that situation. I cannot fathom just posture alone working. Maybe a pessary, or is it simply too far gone?

I think there should be far more education on the preventive measures to be taken for pop in these countries, but that still does not solve the problem for the 1/3 of these women who are severely prolapsed.

So, what would your prescription be if the situation was 4th degree, all the way out?

kathy2124

...I have answered your question with a blog post! You can find it here.

:) Christine