oophorectomy Archives - Page 2 of 4

Share Your Hysterectomy Experience

by WS

Published on December 4, 2018

4440 views

The hysterectomy and oophorectomy industry continues to flourish. There are over 600,000 hysterectomies every year. The oophorectomy rate is about 70% of the hysterectomy rate, some performed at the time of hysterectomy and others as separate surgeries. About 90% of these surgeries are for benign conditions (elective). These are merely estimates based on samples of inpatient data from short-term, acute-care, nonfederal hospitals along with hysterectomy and oophorectomy outpatient percentage estimates. According to the aforementioned publication, the rate of outpatient (ambulatory) hysterectomies increased from 14% in 2000 to 70% in 2014. Outpatient oophorectomies increased from 57% to 84% over the same time period. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports only inpatient hysterectomies which is why hysterectomy rates are typically understated by the media. A 70% understatement is a gross misrepresentation and outpatient hysterectomies may now exceed 70%.

Hysterectomy is seen as panacea for a multitude of women’s health issues. Unfortunately, it is not, and yet, this perception that hysterectomy is a cure-all survives, largely because of false information from gynecologists, gynecologic oncologists, other medical professionals, hospitals, surgical centers, the media, and women who have had the surgery(ies).

The prevalence of hysterectomy and oophorectomy leads the public to mistakenly believe that a woman’s sex organs are disposable. In many cases, gynecologists fail to provide their patients with the necessary factual information to make an informed decision about these surgeries, leaving women and their partners to learn about the side effects after the fact. Some of the more commonly reported side effects include: bladder and bowel dysfunction, skeletal and figure changes, sexual dysfunction, emotional emptiness, and impaired ovarian function. Although some may believe these side effects are rare and thus rarely discussed pre-surgery, comments on these hysterectomy articles indicate they must be more common than many realize.

What makes these side effects even more troubling, is the fact these procedures are rarely needed. Women are coaxed into the surgery under the false pretense of cancer or pre-cancer or told it is their only or best option. Finally, many women’s organ(s) are removed despite having specifically told their surgeons that organ(s) should not be removed. Here is just one of those stories.

In light of the problems with hysterectomy, the HERS Foundation is collecting stories of post-hysterectomy problems. We are supporting that effort. If you would like to share your story, consider participating in the “In My Own Voice” project. To learn more, click here.

If you would like to share your story here on Hormones Matter, please contact us here.

Thank you in advance for sharing your hysterectomy experience.

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Hysterectomy: Greed and Ignorance Reign

by WS

Published on May 29, 2018

7003 views

Hysterectomies and C-sections are two of the most overused surgeries. One in three women has a hysterectomy by age 60 and about half eventually have one. Approximately 600,000 women undergo hysterectomy annually, 50,000 to 60,000 of which are for a cancer diagnosis. This graph (figure B) depicts the number done for cancer (which are typically done as inpatient). However, the graph misrepresents total hysterectomies as it depicts only inpatient figures. In 2014, 70% of hysterectomies were done as outpatient – in ambulatory surgery centers or in hospitals with discharge in less than 24 hours. So one could say that ~90% of the ~600,000 are unnecessary. ACOG says that 76% do not meet ACOG criteria.

The Greed Factor

What is driving the high rate of hysterectomies? The more cynical among us would argue that money or greed is a large contributing factor and there are certainly data to back this up. In this article, a gynecologist talks about attending a seminar where gynecologists were coached on how to cultivate patients for hysterectomy to maximize fees. The healthcare dollars wasted on unnecessary medical procedures, especially hysterectomy at $17B, is discussed here. Another factor contributing to this gross overuse is the failure to properly diagnose and inform patients of treatment options and their risks and benefits. This failure may also be due, at least in part, to greed.

Ignorance at Play?

Still yet another variable may be at play: ignorance. For whatever reason, there is a huge disconnect between the perceived benign nature of the procedure and its reality. The research here, here and here are just a few examples of the compelling evidence of the damaging effects. These effects are affirmed by the thousands of comments on the various hysterectomy articles on this blog and others.

A Gynecologist’s Defense of Hysterectomy

A comment by a gynecologist on one of my articles reflects the ignorance and arrogance regarding the many aftereffects of hysterectomy (with or without ovary removal / castration).

Here is the May 3, 2018 comment by gynecologist Yvonne Treece, MD, FACOG:

There is no or minimal evidence to support many of these claims particularly in regards to pelvic ligaments providing support to the entire torso, loss of sensation, loss of sexual pleasure, fatigue, joint and ligament pain. There is some risk of nerve damage, but it is very small and does not result in loss of sensation over the whole vulva and vagina. There is a small risk of damage to bowel or bladder, with the ureters at highest risk. The percentages given in the YouTube video are grossly exaggerated, and most have no proven correlation with hysterectomy. The uterosacral ligaments are preserved in supracervical and most laparoscopic hysterectomies. The vast, vast majority of hysterectomies are uncomplicated. Most of the YouTube video is false. The false and misleading information is a disservice to patients. Where is the evidence for these claims?
I disagree that 70-90% of hysterectomies are unnecessary. Source? As alternative treatments become available, hysterectomy rates are falling. I am an OB/Gyn, and certainly do not do unnecessary hysterectomies, especially not for profit! That is a very hurtful, and malicious thing to say. It is not true of any one I know. Certainly someone may be performing unnecessary surgery for profit, but that is highly unethical, and illegal. Not mainstream.
Please look at an anatomy book (like the slides on the YouTube videos). A lot of your claims are physiologically nonsensical. It makes me sad that people have bad outcomes sometimes, but it saddens and frustrates me when patients are given misinformation attributing physical symptoms to a hysterectomy when they are unrelated.
I would be happy to have a dialogue with you about hysterectomy. I’m sure we could both learn from each other.

Here is my rebuttal comment:

Yvonne – As a doctor in a specialty (gynecology) whose training and livelihood is entrenched in doing hysterectomies (as well as oophorectomies), it’s natural to deny and defend. I don’t know how much of your misinformation is due to lack of proper medical training (including intentional omission by medical schools) and how much is in defense of your profession and livelihood. But regardless, I will address your points:
1) The severing of the ligaments that run from the uterus to the pelvic wall cause a collapse of the torso. It’s an anatomical fact. To use an analogy – If you cut through bridge supports, the bridge will collapse. A woman can still be “fit” after a hysterectomy but her figure / skeletal structure will be altered. Her midsection will gradually shorten and thicken (even absent weight gain). Women’s comments corroborate this. Further evidence of this can be seen as an indentation at each side of her back (one woman referred to it as a “plane” across her back) where her rib cage is now sitting on her hip bones. Another telltale sign is a crease / line that starts a couple inches above the navel and then gradually lengthens across her midsection as her rib cage drops. I doubt you typically observe patients before their surgeries and a few years after in their underwear to be able to observe these changes. And it seems many women end their relationships with their surgeons. They certainly don’t need birth control or any other reproductive services.
2) Another anatomical fact – The uterus separates and anchors the bladder and bowel. Its removal displaces them increasing risk for dysfunction in the short and long-term including incontinence and prolapse. With so many women having had hysterectomies, it’s no wonder incontinence is so prevalent.
3) Another anatomical fact – A shortened and sutured shut vagina lacks the bundle of nerves at the bottom of the cervix as well as the tip of the cervix that heightens sexual pleasure for both the woman and man.
4) How can you truly believe that severing of nerves and blood vessels, including those running through ligaments that are severed, does not cause loss of sensation and sexual pleasure? It is basic physiology that innervation and blood flow are vital to sensation. Many women even report loss of nipple sensation. And furthermore, uterine orgasms cannot physically happen without a uterus. This is a HUGE loss for many women. And many women who still have ovaries (the lucky ones whose ovaries haven’t “died” due to loss of blood flow and feedback with the uterus) report loss of libido and sexual function. There are PLENTY of women’s stories of shattered lives on the web if you really care to know.
5) Most hysterectomies may be (in your words) uncomplicated (absent the “surgical” errors of ureter, bladder, bowel damage, nerve damage, blood clots, hemorrhage, infection, morcellated / upstaged tumors, anesthesia harms, death). But the after effects are forever (as are the after effects of some complications when they occur). And shockingly, 55% of hysterectomies include removal of ovary(ies) (equivalent of a man’s testicles) despite the average woman’s lifetime risk of ovarian cancer being a measly 1.3%. More ovaries are removed as separate surgeries.
6) According to Obstetrics & Gynecology August 2013, ~50,000 hysterectomies are done for cancer. That is less than 10% of all hysterectomies making over 90% unnecessary. Media reports of declining hysterectomy rates are misleading in that they typically report only inpatient hysterectomies and the large majority are now done outpatient / ambulatory as I’m sure you’re aware. In 2014, 70% of commercially insured hysterectomies were outpatient.
7) I’m concerned that you also fail to inform your patients of the many increased health risks associated with hysterectomy (with ovarian “conservation”) – cardiovascular disease (3-fold), metabolic syndrome, increased Body Mass Index, increased BP, renal cell cancer, colorectal cancer, thyroid cancer. Ovary removal (castration) or post-hysterectomy ovarian failure is also common and is associated with another whole list of health risks such as cardiovascular disease (7-fold), stroke, lung cancer, osteoporosis, hip fracture, dementia, parkinsonism, impaired cognition and memory, mood disorders, adverse ocular and skin changes, sleep disorders, more severe hot flushes. Even unilateral oophorectomy (with or without hysterectomy) is associated with increased risk of cognitive impairment, dementia and parkinsonism.
Needing CME credits? You may have just earned some although you should have already known all of the above since this is your specialty.
Let the women who have had unnecessary hysterectomies (and those who love them) decide who is doing a “disservice to patients.”
Alternatives to hysterectomy are great but some of those also cause permanent harm. Ablation has been shown to increase risk of hysterectomy due to Post Ablation Syndrome. The blood can get trapped in the uterus (behind the scarred lining or due to a stenotic cervix) and/or back up into the tubes causing chronic and debilitating pelvic pain. Although procedures are the money makers, they should only be used as a last resort especially when they can do more harm than good. That applies to any specialty.
You said you “certainly do not do unnecessary hysterectomies, especially not for profit!” You mentioned you’re an ob/gyn so I assume not a gynecologic oncologist. In that case, all hysterectomies you do should be for benign conditions which makes them unnecessary.
If “performing unnecessary surgery for profit” is not “mainstream” then how do you explain the high rate of hysterectomies when less than 10% are done for cancer? And why do residents have to do so many hysterectomies yet ZERO myomectomies when many hysterectomies are done for fibroids? Yes, it’s very unethical but it’s the “standard of care” so it continues.

It’s no surprise that she did not respond to my rebuttal even though she stated “I would be happy to have a dialogue with you about hysterectomy.”

It Comes Down to Money

Gynecologists are supposed to be the experts on female anatomy and physiology. There is an abundance of medical literature on the harms of female organ removal. So how can they not know the consequences of removing the uterus and/or ovaries? As Upton Sinclair said:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

You can read all my articles about three of gynecology’s destructive procedures – hysterectomy, oophorectomy, endometrial ablation – here. They include citations to medical literature.

For the truth about female anatomy and the lifelong functions of the female organs, check out this video:

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More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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Image by Sasin Tipchai from Pixabay.

Uterus and Ovaries: Fountain of Youth

by WS

Published on January 30, 2018

7868 views

Numerous studies have shown a strong correlation between removal of both ovaries / bilateral oophorectomy (castration) and accelerated aging as measured by an increased risk of chronic health conditions. Hysterectomy / uterus removal with preservation of both ovaries is also associated with some of these chronic conditions. These include heart disease, stroke, metabolic syndrome, osteoporosis, hip fracture, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, dementia, Parkinsonism, impaired cognition and memory, mood disorders, sleep disorders, adverse skin and body composition changes, adverse ocular changes including glaucoma, impaired sexual function, more severe hot flushes and urogenital atrophy. Wow, that’s quite a list!

Ovaries: Health Powerhouses

This 2016 article titled “Study: Remove ovaries, age faster” sums up the findings of Mayo Clinic researchers proving yet again the harmful and unethical practice of ovary removal. The study found that ovary removal (oophorectomy) is associated with a higher incidence of 18 chronic conditions and should be discontinued in women who are not at high risk for ovarian cancer. Although this study cites the increase in chronic conditions in women who undergo oophorectomy before age 46, other studies have shown that oophorectomy even after menopause does more harm than good. Here is one that showed that to be true up to age 75.

The ovaries have both reproductive and endocrine functions as detailed in this International Menopause Society article. After menopause, the ovaries produce mostly androgens, some of which are converted into estrogen. Testosterone levels are more than 40% lower in women without ovaries compared to intact women. Women without their uterus likewise have lower levels but not as low as women without ovaries per this article. Estrogen therapy mitigates some but not all of the increased health risks of oophorectomy. But estrogen further reduces androgen levels increasing risk of osteoporosis and fracture. Nothing can replace the lifelong functions of the ovaries (and uterus).

The Uterus / Ovaries / Tubes Connection

The harms of ovary removal would also apply to ovarian failure that commonly occurs after hysterectomy and some other medical treatments. As previously cited, women who have had a hysterectomy have lower levels of testosterone. According to this 1986 publication, 39% of these women showed signs of ovarian failure. This study showed a nearly 2-fold increased risk of ovarian failure when both ovaries were preserved and nearly 3-fold when one was preserved. This likely explains the increased risk of heart disease and metabolic conditions as shown by multiple studies including this recent Mayo Clinic one. However, per this 1982 study, the uterus itself protects women from heart disease via the uterine substance prostacyclin. Loss of bone density is another harm of hysterectomy as shown by multiple studies such as this one.

Removal of even one ovary (unilateral oophorectomy) without hysterectomy is also harmful. Studies out of the Mayo Clinic showed increased risks of cognitive impairment or dementia and parkinsonism. Colorectal cancer is another increased risk according to this Chinese study and this Swedish one.

The Fallopian tubes appear to impair ovarian function to some degree as evidenced by Post Tubal Ligation / Sterilization Syndrome. This study shows an increase in Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) after tube removal (salpingectomy).

Ovarian impairment after hysterectomy or salpingectomy is thought to be the mechanism of the reduced risk of ovarian cancer which is already rare.

The Uterus: Anatomy, Sex, Cancer Prevention

Hysterectomy is associated with other harms besides impaired ovarian / endocrine function. The uterus and its ligaments / pelvic support structures are essential for pelvic organ integrity as well as skeletal integrity. The effects on these structures and functions are detailed here and here. This article shows the many hysterectomized women lamenting their “broken bodies” – changes to their figures, back, hip and midsection pain, pelvic pain, bladder and bowel issues, and effects of severed nerves and blood vessels.

The uterus and associated nerves and blood vessels play a key role in sexuality and vibrancy. You can hear the desperation in women’s comments about the devastating sexual losses and feelings of emotional emptiness.

There is an increased risk of renal cell, thyroid, and colorectal cancers after hysterectomy. How ironic when cancer fear tactics are commonly used to market hysterectomy and/or oophorectomy.

Adhesions that commonly form after these surgeries can cause serious problems especially in the long term. Surgical complications – nerve injuries, bladder, bowel and ureter injuries, vaginal cuff dehiscence, a too short vagina, infections, hemorrhage – are more common than indicated by gynecologists.

Although “The Miraculous Uterus” article fails to mention the anatomical harms, it is otherwise “spot on.” It talks about the “ovarian conservation scam” and that “passion, love, ecstasy, the emotional essence that drives human achievement, forever after elude them.” This explains why “there’s no effective outrage against the barbarism of hysterectomy.”

Compelling Evidence of Harm

Clearly, there is compelling medical evidence that both hysterectomy and oophorectomy are destructive surgeries. Unfortunately, some hysterectomy forums censor negative posts giving a slanted view of the life shattering effects. Here is a sampling of women’s experiences on the Gyn Reform site.

The medical literature on the harms of these surgeries dates back over a century. Listed below are a small number of the numerous publications (minus the ovarian failure studies cited above). The Gyn Reform website has a fairly comprehensive list of resources on oophorectomy. Its Ovaries for Life sister site provides a good overview of the lifelong importance of our ovaries.

1912 – The Physiological Influence of Ovarian Secretion

1914 – Nervous and Mental Disturbances following Castration in Women

1958 – The controversial ovary

1973 – Osteoporosis after Oophorectomy for Non-malignant Disease in Premenopausal Women

“Oophorectomy before the age of 45 years was found to be associated with a significantly increased prevalence of osteoporosis within three to six years of operation.”

1974 – Endocrine Function of the Postmenopausal Ovary: Concentration of Androgens and Estrogens in Ovarian and Peripheral Vein Blood

1978 – The emotional and psychosexual aspects of hysterectomy

1981 – Premenopausal hysterectomy and cardiovascular disease

1981 – Sexual response after hysterectomy-oophorectomy: Recent studies and reconsideration of psychogenesis

1981 – The role of estrogen and oophorectomy in immune synovitis

1982 – Prostacyclin from the uterus and woman’s cardiovascular advantage

1989 – The effects of simple hysterectomy on vesicourethral function

“The results show that simple hysterectomy is associated with a significant incidence of post-operative vesicourethral dysfunction and that there is an identifiable neurological abnormality incurred at operation which is pertinent to the subsequent disordered voiding.”

1990 – Effects of bilateral oophorectomy on lipoprotein metabolism

1994 – The climacteric ovary as a functional gonadotropin-driven androgen-producing gland

1996 – Urinary incontinence in older women: who is at risk? Study of Osteoporotic Fractures Research Group

“Urinary incontinence is a common problem in older women, more common than most chronic medical conditions. Of the associated factors that are preventable or modifiable, obesity and hysterectomy may have the greatest impact on the prevalence of daily incontinence.”

1997 – Bladder, bowel and sexual function after hysterectomy for benign conditions

1998 – Ovaries, androgens and the menopause: practical applications

1998 – Impairment of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons associated with aging and long-term loss of ovarian function

1998 – Influence of bilateral oophorectomy upon lipid metabolism

1999 – Estrogen and movement disorders

2000 – The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal and gonadal axes in rheumatoid arthritis

2000 – Risk of myocardial infarction after oophorectomy and hysterectomy

2000 – Hysterectomy, Oophorectomy, and Endogenous Sex Hormone Levels in Older Women: The Rancho Bernardo Study

2005 – Ovarian conservation at the time of hysterectomy for benign disease

“Ovarian conservation until age 65 benefits long-term survival…. There is sustained, but decreasing, benefit until the age of 75, when excess mortality for oophorectomy is less than 1%.”

2007 – Ovarian conservation at the time of hysterectomy for benign disease

“Approximately 78% of women between the ages of 45 and 64 years have prophylactic oophorectomy when hysterectomy is performed for benign disease…. Therefore, the decision to perform prophylactic oophorectomy should be approached with great caution for the majority of women who are at low risk of developing ovarian cancer.”

2009 – Ovarian conservation at the time of hysterectomy and long-term health outcomes in the nurses’ health study

“In no analysis or age group was oophorectomy associated with increased survival.”

2010 – Current indications and role of surgery in the management of sigmoid diverticulitis

“A previous history of hysterectomy is a valuable clinical clue to the correct diagnosis as colovaginal and colovesical fistulas are rare in females with their uterus in place, as the uterus becomes a screen interposed between the inflamed colon and the bladder and vagina.”

2012 – Oophorectomy for whom and at what age? Primum non nocere

2016 – Study: Remove ovaries, age faster

2017 – Cardiovascular and metabolic morbidity after hysterectomy with ovarian conservation: a cohort study

A Harmful Practice That Won’t Die

Ovary removal / castration was introduced by Robert Battey in 1872 and “was practised widely for several decades….. Better insight into female physiology and ovarian function finally pushed the sinister operation of Robert Battey from the scene.” This publication refers to Battey’s operation as “barbaric.”

Despite the long-standing and compelling evidence of harm, these surgeries continue at alarming rates. Publications are misleading in that they report inpatient surgeries despite the large majority being outpatient (70% in 2014). This 2008 article reported that oophorectomies “more than doubled in frequency since the 1960’s.” According to results of a FOIA request by Ovaries for Life, there are over 700,000 oophorectomies every year despite there being only ~22,000 cases of ovarian cancer. Hysterectomy figures obtained by Ovaries for Life are also shocking at 830,000 in light of less than 70,000 cases of endometrial and cervical cancers.

Many media reports have questioned the high rate of these surgeries since gynecologic cancers are rare. The oldest one I could find was dated 1969. I found about three articles per decade in the mainstream media since then. According to the Athena Institute, half of U.S. medical schools in 1986 “had changed their suggestions and were now recommending a reconsideration of the common practice of ovariectomy.” Evidently, that never took hold.

Congress held two hearings on hysterectomy, one in 1976 and one in 1993. The 1993 transcripts state that the hysterectomy rate increased 250% in women ages 15 to 24 and 186% in ages 25 to 34 from 1965 to 1984! Despite these shocking statistics, it appears that no action was taken after either hearing.

According to this “Reassessing Hysterectomy” article, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality sponsored research and conferences on the overuse of hysterectomy in the 1990’s. This article is packed with information on the prevalence and harms of hysterectomy and oophorectomy as well as alternative treatment options. Yet, the high rate of hysterectomy has continued such that 45% of women will end up having one. Citing 2006 data, the oophorectomy rate was 73% of the hysterectomy rate.

How to End the Harm?

I’ve been researching this subject for over 10 years and sharing my experience and knowledge on various websites. It’s shocking how many women are misled and deceived into these surgeries. Age doesn’t seem to matter; younger and younger women are undergoing these surgeries. This appears to be the biggest surgical racket and women’s healthcare con as discussed here.

There are a number of issues that perpetuate the gross overuse of these harmful surgeries. These include:

These surgeries and “forever after” care are very lucrative.
The public has been led to believe that the female organs are disposable after childbearing is complete.
Medical education and decades of practice have made these surgeries “a standard of care.”
Informed consent is seriously lacking.
Gynecology consent forms are open ended giving surgeons “carte blanche” to remove organs unnecessarily.
We still live in a climate of gender disparity / male dominance.

As you can see from the list of publications above, some study authors have called out the practice of ovary removal as unethical. Numerous professional societies have issued guidelines discouraging its use in most women. But most have been silent on the overuse of hysterectomy despite its many harms.

Why has our government not stepped in to address this egregious harm? Women who have contacted their legislators have been met with indifference. Gyn Reform reported on their experiences with legislators and other authorities who can effect change. The non-profit HERS Foundation has been educating women and advocating for informed consent legislation since the 1980’s.

Why do insurance companies approve so many of these surgeries that are rarely necessary? Not only are the surgeries themselves expensive, treatments for the chronic after effects are costly. Reining in unnecessary treatments especially those that cause lifelong harm would go a long way towards making healthcare more affordable.

Why has Graduate Medical Education (GME) not changed their surgical requirements to favor organ preservation? Each resident must do at least 70 hysterectomies but there is no requirement for myomectomy (fibroid removal). Residents don’t need to do any cystectomies (cyst removals) either which is partly why so many women lose ovaries for benign ovarian cysts. Here are the GME ob/gyn requirements.

A popular mantra at Tufts in the 1970’s – “There’s no room in the tomb for the womb” – reflects this culture of the disposable uterus and gynecologists’ obsession with its removal. Insurance reimbursement rates are also to blame as they incentivize hysterectomy and oophorectomy over myomectomy and cystectomy. In many cases, medical management versus surgery is the appropriate course. The “Reassessing Hysterectomy” article cited above lists a number of treatment options for gynecologic problems. Revamping reimbursement rates to strongly favor organ preservation should eventually force GME to change their requirements. But how do we make that happen?

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More people than ever are reading Hormones Matter, a testament to the need for independent voices in health and medicine. We are not funded and accept limited advertising. Unlike many health sites, we don’t force you to purchase a subscription. We believe health information should be open to all. If you read Hormones Matter, like it, please help support it. Contribute now.

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Lucas Cranach the Elder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Hysterectomy and the “C” Word

by WS

Published on November 1, 2017

12281 views

I have connected with many women in the nine years since my unwarranted hysterectomy. I have been appalled and saddened by the number of women who were railroaded into hysterectomy and/or oophorectomy (ovary removal – castration) by being told that it was necessary. Some were misled into believing they had cancer or pre-cancer when they did not. Some were referred to oncologists unnecessarily to further instill fear.

The fact that only 2% of these surgeries are done for a cancer diagnosis and most pre-cancerous conditions are treatable without organ removal, something is certainly “rotten in Denmark.”

Gynecologic Cancer Statistics

According to U.S. government cancer statistics, the average woman’s lifetime risk of gynecologic cancers is rare. Specifically, statistics are:

Cervical – 0.7%
Endometrial – 2.7%
Ovarian – 1.3%

With these low rates of cancer as well as the organ-sparing treatments available for almost all gynecologic maladies including abnormal or precancerous cells (that may never even turn into cancer), why are surgeons removing so many female organs?

Using Cancer to Market Hysterectomy

With the prevalence of cancer scare tactics by surgeons and the media, women tend to focus on ridding themselves of the potential for cancer even though that risk is very low for all but a small percentage of women. This focus on the cancer aspect is oftentimes to the exclusion of considering the long-term adverse effects of losing the uterus and/or ovaries. Very few people encourage women to question their doctors. This is even rarer when the “c” word is used.

The Big C: Is it Cancer or Conspiracy?

With the cancer rates so low, one has to wonder whether the big C we all hear about, is cancer or something else. Based on all the research I have done and the many women with whom I have connected since my unwarranted hysterectomy and castration, I have concluded that the “C” isn’t about cancer at all. It is about conspiracy.

The Free Dictionary defines “conspiracy” as “An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.” Let’s break down the definition of “conspiracy”:

“an agreement to perform together”

There are many players in the annual $17B hysterectomy and oophorectomy industry – the surgeons and their nurses and office staff, the anesthesiologists, the hospitals and their nurses and other staff, the medical device manufacturers (e.g., da Vinci robot), and indirectly the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture and market hormone “replacement” drugs and other drugs to treat conditions resulting from post-hysterectomy side effects.

“an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act”

A medical treatment that is procured through misleading or dishonest information and omission of facts from a doctor or other medical professional is, plain and simple, wrong. And the unnecessary removal of organs with vital, lifelong functions is a most egregious act which should be treated as assault and battery as well as fraud.

How else can one explain the removal of 1 in 3 women’s vital sex organ(s) by age 60 and 1 in 2 by age 65 with these very low cancer rates? And how else can one explain that 78% of women ages 45 to 64 lose healthy ovaries at the time of hysterectomy?

Prophylactic Ovary Removal with Hysterectomy: More Deadly than Cancer

What else would account for the fact that these damaging surgeries are a $17B industry despite the many medical studies showing the long-term harm? This article highlights the absurdity of pre- and post-menopausal prophylactic ovary removal due to the “higher risks of coronary heart disease, stroke, hip fracture, Parkinsonism, dementia, cognitive impairment, depression and anxiety in many studies. While ovarian cancer accounts for 14,800 deaths per year in the USA, coronary heart disease accounts for 350,000 deaths per year. In addition, 100,000 cases of dementia may be attributable annually to prior bilateral oophorectomy.” And post-hysterectomy ovarian failure which occurs at a fairly high rate would have these same risks. Although the heart disease fact sheet on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) website lists heart disease as the #1 killer of women, there is no mention of the link between female organ removal and heart disease. Nor does the CDC’s dementia fact sheet list it as a risk factor for dementia.

ACOG Says: Most Hysterectomies not Medically Necessary

A 2000 study showed that 76% of hysterectomies did not meet ACOG criteria and 70% were deemed unnecessary. An excerpt says “The most common reasons recommendations for hysterectomies considered inappropriate were lack of adequate diagnostic evaluation and failure to try alternative treatments before hysterectomy.” Another excerpt says “Hysterectomy is often recommended for indications judged inappropriate. Patients and physicians should work together to ensure that proper diagnostic evaluation has been done and appropriate treatments considered before hysterectomy is recommended.”

In other words, women need to proceed with extreme caution and not rely on their Gynecology specialists’ treatment recommendations. So who can women trust??

Women to Women “Support” for Hysterectomy Decisions? Maybe. Maybe not.

Can women count on other women who have had hysterectomies and/or oophorectomies to share the negatives? In my experience, not so much. This is likely due to a number of factors but primarily, if a woman believes the removal of her organ(s) was necessary, as many are led to believe, she is less apt to share the negatives because she assumes the surgery was necessary for her and must be necessary for other women. Even when the organ removal was truly her choice, the horrifying effects can be too much to bear, much less admit to others. It is difficult to admit when one makes a medical mistake, especially when there is nothing available to fix the mistake.

After I had my hysterectomy, the last thing I wanted to do was call attention to my severely thinning, dry, frizzy hair, my rapidly aging / sagging skin, and horrifying figure changes. I have since become outspoken and hope that the visible effects of having my organs removed have made an impact on those who know my situation. For those who did not know me or my situation, I am sure there were whispered questions “what happened to her?”

Post-hysterectomy, I experienced personality changes. My vivacious, happy, social disposition changed drastically almost overnight to the exact opposite. I became a recluse, seldom talked, never laughed, and was suicidal with depressed and anxious thoughts. This was before any of the classic menopausal symptoms kicked in. These changes had to be obvious to my co-workers, friends, and family members. The loss of my sexual “energy” may have been lost on many but was very apparent to me (and my husband). Even though talk of sex and sexuality is all over the media, it is still somewhat taboo to share such intimate information. And who wants to admit that they have lost their sexuality? From my experience, it can be difficult to share the breadth and depth of symptoms experienced after the ovaries are removed and so, woman to woman support may not be as forthcoming as we might hope. You can read my unnecessary hysterectomy story here.

Post Hysterectomy Symptoms Develop Gradually

Another reason woman to woman support is not always helpful is that many of the negative effects of hysterectomy do not develop immediately, especially when ovaries are not removed. Women who have been suffering with severe and/or prolonged health issues prior to the hysterectomy, are happy to get relief and, therefore, tell others they were glad they had the surgery. Once the problems start stacking up, they may not want to reverse course and admit that their hysterectomy and/or oophorectomy was a mistake. Moreover, they may not associate new symptoms with the surgery, especially those that developed gradually or cropped up many months or years down the road. Regardless of the problems that led up to the surgery, it is human nature to justify our decisions and discount the negatives of those decisions.

Finally, many people (women and men) find it difficult to believe that a surgery that is so common can have such serious and permanent side effects. Why would these surgeries be so prevalent if they can cause so much harm? Don’t doctors take an oath to “do no harm?” When I was told I needed organs removed, I know my first thought was surely my doctor (one I had respected for 19 years) would not remove organs needlessly. Boy, was I wrong!

Hysterectomy Forums are not Entirely Balanced

You would think internet hysterectomy forums would give women ample information about the many negative effects and the gross overuse of hysterectomy and oophorectomy. Speaking out anonymously on a forum is “safer” than doing so in person, but for any number of reasons, balanced discussions regarding the risks versus the benefits of hysterectomy and/or ovary removal are rare on public hysterectomy forums.

Many women don’t seem to take the time to read old posts before proceeding to surgery. Instead, they post asking for input and tend to base their decisions on the responses they get. These opinions, along with their surgeons’ input tend to omit or gloss over the long-term effects of hysterectomy. In some cases, time constraints derail a woman’s ability to research her options. From my experience, surgeons tend to rush women into surgery.

Some hysterectomy forums exude camaraderie and sisterhood amongst the hysterectomy ranks. However, if your experiences are negative and you discourage hysterectomy, your voice is drowned out by all those encouraging hysterectomy, both ones who have had the surgery (many who are recently post-op) and ones who are considering or scheduled for surgery. Posts will be hidden or blocked if the staff considers them too negative or members or staff report your posts as “frightening.”

The hiding or blocking of posts does not align with providing women thorough discussion of hysterectomy risks versus benefits. In fact, hiding posts from women who have had negative experiences with hysterectomy and/or ovary removal, biases the forum in favor of organ removal. For women considering surgery, not seeing the potentially negative consequences can skew their decision making. Biased discussions, hidden or blocked posts also occur on surgical menopause forums. I was banned from a surgical menopause forum for talking about the anatomical and skeletal changes that develop post-hysterectomy, information women should have prior to making a decision. This article explains the post-hysterectomy figure changes.

C = Conspiracy

Clearly, conspiracy is much more at play than cancer when it comes to female organ removal. Buyer beware! Any woman considering a hysterectomy and/or oophorectomy should watch the HERS Foundation’s video of “Female Anatomy: the Functions of the Female Organs.” Yes, it IS frightening but wouldn’t you want to know the possible repercussions before consenting to something so permanent especially if you do not have cancer?

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This post was published originally in October 2014.

Surgical Menopause in Young Women: The Medical Epidemic No One Is Talking About

by Nicole Shanks

Published on August 17, 2017

5855 views

They call it “Surgical Menopause”, couldn’t they have come up with a better name for it? Something, really anything else would be preferable to attaching the word “menopause” to a young woman still in her prime, still very much at the start of her story. A word that doesn’t conjure up images of graying ladies sitting around a shuffleboard court in West Palm Beach sipping Arnold Palmers out of frosted glasses. I am 30 years old and I’m in surgical menopause. This shouldn’t be happening to me.

Losing the First Ovary

When I was 25, I woke up with an acute pain radiating from my abdomen that was relentless enough for me to wake my mother in the dead of night to rush me to the ER. I thought it was, most likely, appendicitis, so did the emergency room staff, until they saw the ultrasound. I had a solid mass the size of a grapefruit twisted around my left ovary. The sense of urgency became apparent, as the hospital’s top OBGYN surgeon hurried through the night to remove the mass before it ruptured its contents into my belly. The word “Cancer” fluttered in the air, but before I could count to three, the anesthesia kicked in. When I came to, hours later, I was stitched together with six-inch battle wound akin to a C-Section and I had lost my left ovary.

At least I had one working ovary, I thought. I recalled the episode of “Sex and the City” where Miranda, the “smart one”, is informed by her gynecologist that one of her ovaries is lazy and thus becomes concerned that she can no longer be so choosy about men if she’s intent on motherhood. In subsequent episodes, she discovers she is, in fact, pregnant in spite of her bum ovary. But that was the extent of my knowledge of problematic ovaries at the time. It all worked out for Miranda, a woman pushing forty, so naturally I thought it would for me as well.

I hobbled to the hospital bathroom like I was carrying a watermelon between my legs, cracked a joke to the nurse to divert from the seriousness of the situation, my usual coping device. But it hurt to laugh. I slurped back a couple mouthfuls of Jell-O, pressed the button on my morphine drip, and I went back to sleep.

A day later, the pathology returned, revealing that my mass was a Borderline Ovarian Tumor, which is a low malignancy potential ovarian cancer. It’s estimated that 15 out of 100 ovarian tumors are borderline ovarian tumors. Despite this sizable number there is very little research being done on this form of cancer that impacts women between 20-40, their most fertile years. There is a 50% rate of bilateral recurrence, meaning they tend to grow on not one but both ovaries, and the only treatment for it that currently exists is surgery. In short, I was 25 with ovarian cancer having to swallow the bitter pill that I would most likely lose both my ovaries, and thus my fertility, by the age of 30. I was gutted.

I cried for a month following my diagnosis and the possibility of never having children. While it still seemed years away at 25, being a Mother had always been my biggest dream. I envisioned a home filled with children’s laughter, toys and art supplies strewn about in joyful disarray, and myself at the center of it. I never imagined something might happen to render that vision of my future life an impossibility.

The Race to Preserve Fertility

I was quickly referred to a top fertility specialist in NYC to freeze my eggs even though I wasn’t married or planning a family. Over the next four years, I underwent 5 rounds of IVF to freeze eggs and 6 surgeries to remove recurring borderline ovarian tumors. The body that I’d always loved and derived pleasure from became foreign to me, an enemy, an other, a two faced traitor. I dreaded each ultra sound appointment, as the flickering black and white monitor of my uterus inevitably exposed new borderline ovarian tumors growing aggressively.

After these appointments I would ceremoniously lock myself in my room and ugly cry my grief out in private, ultimately picking myself up and pressing onward. I became so stoical simply to get through all my procedures, that often my friends and family didn’t realize how much I was actually going through. If I let myself share, even for a second, all the turbulent emotions that lay just below the surface, I feared I would break into a thousand and one pieces and never be able to put myself back together again, like Humpty Dumpty.

Losing the Other Ovary: Surgical Menopause

By my late 20’s my oncologist told me my remaining ovary had to come out. He spent all of five minutes explaining I would have to wear a hormone patch, as my body would be thrown into early menopause but other than that I would feel largely the same. That was it. I would be a 30-years-old, in Menopause. My shame and despair was so big it could fill a room. I couldn’t even utter the word “Menopause” to my friends and my partner because it made me uncomfortable, and it just seemed wrong. I was young. I was supposed to be in the throes of what everyone had always said would be the best years of my life. I shouldn’t be going into menopause. But, little did I know, that was just the tip of the ice burg…

When I was fresh out of surgery, my mother and me scoured the Internet for information about Surgical Menopause but nearly every resource available was geared toward women in natural menopause. The articles and firsthand accounts of women, particularly young women, in surgical menopause were non-existent. I felt completely alone because no one was talking about this medical condition, at least not publicly.

Swapping Ovarian Cancer for Chronic Health Condition

I am now well into my third year of surgical menopause and happy to report I have had no recurrence of borderline ovarian tumors. I have swapped ovarian cancer for a chronic health condition, which in the medical community’s estimation is a success story. I am by most accounts young with a condition attributed to the old, the aging. I am weary from the side effects of the surgery and the medications, working through the physical and emotional exhaustion of carrying a chronic health condition, but I dig deep and persevere.

I don’t like pity; my mother raised me to be solution oriented. I don’t broadcast my daily struggles on social media, or to my friends and family unless prompted. I don’t like to complain or wear my weakness to the world like a warrior; few people know I am sick. Those who are privy to this knowledge often question how I can post such happy photos on my social media accounts. Sometimes, I do, I feel like a faker living some sort of double life. It isn’t being knowingly deceptive; I just choose to share my “good days”, my wins. It makes me feel normal, at least outwardly. Which, when you feel lousy a good portion of the time as I now do, those healthy snapshots are what you aspire to, not the days when you can’t get out of bed.

Instead of collapsing into a heap of self- pity, I throw myself like a rubber ball against a wall into attempting to fix the unfixable. While it certainly beats dying from ovarian cancer, my body feels broken. It is unrecognizable to me as my own. It’s not just the 20lbs I have put on since surgery (which is standard for women in surgical menopause), or the unpredictability of my health which makes making life plans as well as working a regular job near impossible, or the times I bleed for months because of hormonal imbalance and end up so weak a breeze could blow me over. Rather it’s this indescribable feeling of emptiness where once there was passion, hope, excitement, spirit, vitality and life force. Every day since I woke up from this devastating surgery I am longing just to feel like and be me, the person I was before; I wonder if that person will ever return or if I will simply continue to exist as the ghost of my former self. I feel like I have been robbed of the full and happy life I could have lived because no one, not even doctors, are fully aware of the impact of the surgical removal of ovaries.

Hormone Replacement Therapy Doesn’t Work Well For Everyone

Managing my health condition has become a full time job. The medications I take to compensate for my missing hormones do a poor job of imitating the elegance of the real thing. I have been bounced around to every kind of medical specialist, tried dozens of hormone replacement drugs, and none have given me back any sort of stable quality of life. One day I’ll wake dizzy with my body swollen and up 10lbs with water weight and bleeding heavily, and the next my hormones will have fallen so dangerously low that my face will be ashen, my eyes encircled in red rings, and I feel as though I could pass out. Occasionally I do. I have lost count of the amount of times I have been rushed to the ER because hormone related issues have left made me so ill. Once there, they often can do very little for me other than rule out something more serious like a stroke or heart attack and wait for my vitals to stabilize. The doctors, even the good ones, understanding of women’s hormones amounts to a lot of guess-work and shots in the dark based on external symptoms and a basic framework of hormone levels. Unlike most health conditions, there is no clear and careful protocol for treating Surgical Menopause. I, like many women with this condition, feel like a guinea pig in a medical system that seems to have forgotten us because we have what is deemed to be a “woman’s issue”.

At the time of my final surgery I was told by doctors my condition was the same as natural menopause; that I would simply need to take HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) and all would be well. My Mother, Aunts, and Grandmothers had been through menopause and seemed relatively unscathed so I assumed I’d be the same.

But the truth is surgical menopause is a chronic health condition resulting in the loss of organs, whereas natural menopause is a phase of life that occurs for all women when they age around 50. Women in surgical menopause have a higher chance of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s, heart disease, Osteoporosis, faster and younger. Women in Natural Menopause still produce low levels of hormones for the rest of their lives to sustain their bodies and well being, we do not. Sure we share some of the same symptoms: hot flashes, insomnia, fatigue, weight gain, but we aren’t the same.

My mother, still vibrant in her 60’s, works a full time job and lives life to the fullest, by contrast I had to leave my chosen profession to work from home because my chronic health condition is so unpredictable that it leaves me incapacitated at times. I have good days, I celebrate them, and also days I don’t have the strength to shower. I have a bathroom cabinet full of prescriptions that are supposed to “fix” me, but so far, I remain un-fixable. A third of my time is spent seeing and calling my doctors and interviewing new ones, another third filling out paperwork and prescriptions, and finally, when I am well enough to actually leave my home, the final third is enjoying my family, the few friends that have stuck with me through this, and doing mundane tasks like doing the laundry.

Why the Silence?

I couldn’t understand how nearly 600,000 women a year in the USA could undergo hysterectomies and oophorectomies that left them in surgical menopause and there was little to no research being done on their quality of life following surgery or on more advanced HRT treatment that could give them their lives back. The HRT drugs currently on the market are static doses that do not mimic the fluctuations of a normal female body and thus, like myself, many women battle daily to feel well and like themselves on them. There is some variety of HRT options from bio-identical to synthetic, but the side effects from these medications are often very severe and for anyone, like myself, who is sensitive to medication in general, finding the right HRT in the right balance can feel like an impossible task and your body has to pay the price of being physically ill for any miscalculations. If men were losing their testicles to cancer and various diseases at the rate women are losing their ovaries, you can bet there would be research dollars, big fundraisers, and funding for more humane and improved treatment options. The male birth control pill was recently developed, and shortly after discontinued because men were complaining of the side effects such as mood changes, muscle pain and acne. Mind you, these are side effects women have been enduring for decades on hormone medications.

Finally, in March of 2015, movie star Angelina Jolie came out and spoke publicly about entering surgical menopause and her BRCA 1 diagnosis. At first I was overjoyed to have such a dynamic woman and social justice crusader champion this cause, but because she was one of the smaller group of ladies who did okay following surgery, the subject quickly disappeared from the headlines into the ether and along with it the hope of sparking more interest in advocacy.

The same year I began an online support group with a fellow Surgical Menopause sufferer that now has well over a thousand members spanning the globe. These women are your sisters, your mothers, your friends, your neighbors, and your co-workers. You would never know what they were going through, because few feel confident, outside of online support groups, sharing their difficulty navigating this condition. While there are some hopeful tales the majority of the members of our group share stories of depression, suicidal thoughts, concern that they will be unable to work or that their husbands and partners will leave them due to the extent of their disability or sexual dysfunction, problems with finding the correct HRT and doctor, side effects from HRT, and doctors who seem to have universally not prepared or warned these women in any way for how this surgery would forever alter their lives.

After hearing hundreds of women’s stories of surgical menopause, I quickly realized the reason for this lack of public awareness: shame and I suppose the fear of exposing themselves as no longer having certain parts made them less feminine. Women didn’t want to publicly talk about their condition and by extension the poor treatment options because it had to do with their vaginas, their uterus, their ovaries, and in many cases, their sex lives. Hysterectomies and oophorectomies are not new, they have been performed for over a hundred years and while they do save women from the ravages of cancer, disease, and death, women seem to be expected to endure their hardship with the chronic conditions they are left with quietly, pleasingly, because they involve our lady parts.

Yes, I am one million percent grateful that I had a surgery to save my life from ovarian cancer, but I have every right to have long moments of frustration for having to live with a chronic health condition that is often brushed under the carpet by the medical community because it is considered a “female problem” and a women’s health issue.

I am disheartened that so many women have to go from doctor to doctor like a honey bee, burning through their finances (the average cost of my consultations with a hormone specialist in NYC ran around $700, completely out of pocket); because there is no clear protocol to treat us other than to put us on a generic hormone replacement therapy plan that cannot possibly account for the wide variety of reactions and variations of the female human body. While HRT is a great first step, the science and research is not adequate for the women forced to live with this condition for the rest of their lives and wanting so very badly just to feel human and be functional. Yes some women do okay with having their ovaries removed, but many more, especially young women whose hormones are at their peak at the time of surgery, live greatly compromised lives because the after care is nowhere near where it should be.

I’ve come to accept that I have a condition that has the word “menopause” in its name, even though I think it should be changed so it wouldn’t evoke shame. I find empowerment in running a large support group and realizing I am part of a greater community that numbers in the hundreds of thousands of ladies in the same boat. I am still young, I am still beautiful, I am still fully feminine and fearless. I find solutions, just like my mother taught me. I can’t cure myself but I try daily to figure this shit out even if I am the Tortoise rather than the Hare in this race for good health. But I also have a chronic health condition and it’s called surgical menopause. And it’s time the world paid attention to us.

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Almost Bleeding to Death Monthly Is No Way to Live

by Stacy Reeve

Published on August 7, 2017

9479 views

At age 23, I woke up from an ovarian surgery to the comment, “It’s not cancer, but you have moderate endometriosis. If I were you, I’d get pregnant as soon as possible.” Having only been married for a year, and not yet stable in our financial situation, we just laughed, not really understanding what the doctor meant. And I decided to go right back onto the birth control pill.

Five years later, at age 27, on our anniversary trip we decided it was the perfect time to get off of the pill and try getting pregnant. I remember throwing the packs of pills away, excited for the future to come. Little did I know that would start a whole snowball effect that would ultimately take my health and my fertility.

A year later, I was starting to have odd symptoms. I began having massive acid reflux that was burning my voice box severely. I was quickly started on a Proton Pump Inhibitor. I was never told that it should’ve been a limited time treatment, so I continued taking them. Pretty soon, I started having issues with my menstrual cycles. I noticed that the bleeding was getting heavier and heavier and the pain was increasingly getting worse. It never occurred to me that any of that was in any way abnormal. I just figured it was part of being a woman, and I needed to suck it up.

Severe Menstrual Bleeding and Panic Attacks: Unrecognized B12 and Iron Deficiencies

On October 6th, 2006, I woke up to severe bleeding and panic attacks. My husband rushed me to the doctor where I was diagnosed with severe iron deficiency. My ferritin (stored iron) was incredibly low; almost non-existent. I was sent home with iron pills and instructions to take them once a day. Quickly my health began to decline, and many mornings I would wake up in a sweat and a full panic. I knew something was wrong but all of the tests kept coming back normal. Two years later, when my doctor retired, I received my records and immediately noticed my B12 was also extremely deficient, so I started supplementing B-vitamins on my own. I slowly gained a little energy back, and was able to function semi-normally for a while, however, I still had this underlying anxiety that I couldn’t shake.

Back on Birth Control and Still No Relief

My next option was to go back onto birth control and see if it would control the increasingly heavy and painful menstrual cycles I was having. Unfortunately now, any pill I tried, my body and my anxiety went into a major downward spiral, leading me to quickly come off of any hormone pills. By this time, I was seeing multiple doctors. My bleeding had become very uncontrollable, and I was soon diagnosed with a fibroid. I considered Uterine Artery Embolization, but at that time my fear of losing my fertility was too prominent to go ahead and proceed with the surgery. I continued to increase my iron intake, and after lots of research, I learned a regimen that seemed to work for me. Regular lab testing showed me constantly dropping in iron and blood levels, and then recovering some, and then dropping severely again when my cycle came around. Eventually my cycles got so intense that I was having to use incontinence overnight pads instead of the regular menstrual pads. It was a nightmare. I began to get more and more bed ridden and ended up having to bring in outside help to just help me get through my day, while my husband went to work to provide for our home and my medical needs.

Dropping Blood Pressure, Skyrocketing Heart Rate: I Was Close to Dying

The day after Thanksgiving 2013, which my husband and I had spent alone due to my inability to leave the house, found me unable to get up without almost passing out. My blood pressure was incredibly low and my heart rate was more than 160 beats per minute. I brushed it off as anxiety, but my neighbor who was a paramedic’s wife came by and took one look at me and told me, “Get to the hospital RIGHT NOW!!!” My husband loaded me up into the car and we went. I wasn’t a stranger to the emergency room, but was usually sent home with the comment “take more iron” or “go see your doctor” (which I was, but evidently I wasn’t getting the monitoring or treatment I needed).

So I sat in a wheelchair in the waiting room, waiting for my turn to be called and suddenly two nurses ran out of the doors and headed for me. I looked at my mom who had joined us at the emergency room, knowing instantly this couldn’t be good. There were people who were sicker than I, throwing up all around me. The nurses grabbed my wheelchair and as they wheeled me back I heard a nurse say, “Sweetie you don’t have enough blood in your body, we need to start you on a transfusion right away.” I immediately burst into tears, looking back for my mom and my husband for reassurance. I was terrified of transfusions. I had only ever heard horrible things about them. About allergic reactions, and new diseases transmitted through them. I was absolutely terrified. Through my tears, (which I felt stupid for, because I figured I was old enough not to cry), the nurse quickly and quietly reassured me it would be ok. She said they’d start it slow and keep an eye on me for any reactions, and no, I wouldn’t contract any new diseases. She assured me that transfusions were entirely safe. The flurry of activity around me was overwhelming, and during a small break in the chaos I asked my husband to take a picture of me because I wanted to see what I looked like.

Near death with heavy bleeding

My husband hates that picture now. I think it scares him quite a bit. But I keep it in my computer files to remind me how close I came to dying that day. My skin was so pale it was almost non-existent, yet somehow I was extremely yellow. The lack of blood in my system was shutting down my organs, and I spent the next three days in the cardiac intensive monitoring ward. During this time I received three transfusions.

Bleeding to Death Monthly with No Answers from the Doctors

When I was released from the hospital, I was sent home with more iron pills and an explanation that my stored iron (ferritin) was completely non-existent. When you bleed and don’t have the raw materials to make more blood, your blood levels drop and it can get dangerous. I had no idea that I had let it get to a point where I was so close to having a heart attack from the lack of blood in my body. My doctors apparently didn’t understand it either, as they kept sending me home with little regard for the severity of my condition.

I was determined to not let it happen again. Visits to the doctor didn’t produce any new treatment plans. Unfortunately, my doctor didn’t seem to get the severity of the situation and left me to self-manage my iron and blood levels. The next month when my cycle started, I found myself back at the ER receiving more blood since I had bled out all of the previous month’s transfusions. And so started a vicious cycle: one of receiving transfusions, and starting to be okay and gaining some life back in me, and then starting my cycle, and losing more than the transfusions had given me. For the next 5 months, it became a bi-monthly habit to visit the ER, get my blood replenished and be sent home.

Uterine Artery Embolization to Stop the Bleeding: Pain and Other Problems

Finally, in March of 2014, a new ObGyn suggested a Uterine Artery Embolization again. It is a procedure where they go in through your femoral artery and place plastic pellets to shut off arteries to fibroids and other areas of your uterus. By this time the scans showed I had “innumerable fibroids”. Knowing that the UAE would probably remove the possibility of me ever being able to have a child naturally, my husband and I discussed the pros and cons and made the decision that I needed to have this done. Bleeding to death every month just wasn’t worth it anymore. So, a couple of weeks later I underwent the most painful surgical experience of my life. Imagine giving your uterus a heart attack, by cutting off its blood flow. The next 8 hours were a blur of holding my belly and crying and looking for my mom to help me breathe through the intense contractions that didn’t let up. The pain medicine didn’t even touch a fraction of the pain. Finally, at 12 hours the pain let up as my body learned how to reroute some blood flow to keep my uterus alive, while keeping the blood vessels to the fibroid tumors shut off. I went home to recover, believing it was done. I was looking forward to more normal cycles and healing my missing nutrients and blood I had lost during this whole ordeal.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. Five weeks after the procedure, I began to hurt severely and ended up passing a fibroid that was 3 inches long. This sent me once again to the emergency room where the bleeding became enough to require another transfusion. I was devastated and I just started sobbing. I knew at that moment it hadn’t worked. The next 10 months were a blur of doctor appointments, firing awful doctors, and finding new ones that were going to fight for me. That started the bi-monthly appointments of iron infusions, as they figured out what to do with me. By the end of this, my veins were so messed up that it was hard to get a line in me, and the infusion/chemo nurses were talking about putting in a PICC line. I remember looking at my husband after an infusion that took three attempts to get an IV line into my body, and saying, “This isn’t worth it. I can’t keep going like this.” At that point, we realized that we would have to give in to the hysterectomy that doctors were now recommending.

Hysterectomy and Oophorectomy: From the Frying Pan to the Fire

On January 15, 2015 I went in for a laparoscopic assisted vaginal hysterectomy, believing I would come out with one, or both ovaries. I had left the decision of ovary removal up to my surgeon, who assured me that he would leave them if they were ok. The first question I asked as I woke up was, “Do I have anything left?” The nurses refused to tell me, and once my husband was allowed to see me he shared with tears in his eyes, “They had to take everything.” Evidently the doctor had found endo and new hemorrhagic cysts on both ovaries and had decided it wasn’t worth keeping them. I was a bit concerned when I received this news, but figured menopause would just make me a bit hot and cranky. Everyone goes through menopause, so why couldn’t I? I figured I’d slap a hormone patch on my behind and be good to go. I remember looking at my husband and saying, “It’s over. We did it!!” I now feel so incredibly stupid looking back at that statement. Little did I know, I had just jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

Oh, how I wish I had stood up for my ovaries more that day. What I didn’t know then, but know now is that the ovaries control EVERY SINGLE function in my body. And being a medication sensitive person, so far none of the hormone replacement therapies are matching or helping my body. I seem to absorb and process them differently. Post hysterectomy, we discovered I had a gene disorder called MTHFR, where my body doesn’t handle and process B vitamins correctly, which leaves my liver and system overworked without the correct supplements to help it. We also learned a year later that I should’ve been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), but that had somehow been missed between the endo, fibroids, and bleeding to death. Had I received correct hormonal labs and evaluation and had the PCOS been caught. I might have been able to receive some specialized treatment that maybe would’ve helped. Maybe…

Two and a Half Years Post Hysterectomy

I am two and half years out from my hysterectomy. I am still working on finding a stable and suitable hormone replacement (which some days feels impossible), but I’m hanging onto a sliver of hope it can be done. There are very few guidelines for hormone replacement after a hysterectomy for MTHFR or PCOS, so I am finding the challenge more often than not, completely overwhelming. Most days, I have symptoms that I never had before, which are keeping me bedridden. Migraines, body aches, and dizziness that keep me sidelined are the horrible consequence of taking out my ovaries and losing my hormones. As I began researching, I realized that ovary removal can be absolutely devastating to women. There are over 400 bodily functions that need those hormones to work properly, and my body wasn’t tolerating any of the pharmaceuticals that are available. There are days I wish I had never woken up from that surgery, and the isolation and loneliness of the situation I’m now in, leaves me in tears most of the time. My marriage of 17 years is still surviving, but it has taken a big hit. Intimacy is not what it once was, and the stress of caring for a chronically ill spouse can take its toll on anyone.

I Am Not Alone: The Sad Reality of Women’s Healthcare

The more I researched, the more I realized I wasn’t going through “natural” menopause. I was in something called surgical menopause, which in reality is just another word for female castration. I went searching for information and support sites for surgical menopause, but I kept coming up empty-handed. There just isn’t that much information or support available. So out of desperation and getting tired of calling the suicide hotline, I started a group on Facebook called Surgical Menopause Support. I brought about 15 people from my pre-hysterectomy group with me, so that we could talk about the struggles and hormone craziness we were dealing with, without scaring other women who were facing hysterectomies themselves. I figured I was an exception rather than the rule. The group has now grown to over 1,100 members from all over the world, and I’ve had to add two administrators to help me oversee the group.

Women are desperate to find out what has happened to their body, and why they are feeling so sick and miserable. I was shocked; I wasn’t the exception, this is what it is. This is what happens when you remove an entire organ system from the body. There are days when my jaw just hangs open at the stories these other ladies share, or the comments they get from their doctors. It makes me so sad. Some days I am so angry at the medical community for doing this to me and other women, without the ability to put us back together. It’s probably one of the hardest things you can put a woman through. It seems to remove so much of the person she once knew. And women are in no way made aware or prepared for the challenges that could come from this surgery. It just blows my mind.

So for now, I continue to strive to find hormones that let me be the best me I can be; hoping that I will end up being more functional than I am now. I will continue to offer a supportive place for women to chat about their struggles and feelings. My goal is to somehow make the doctors and medical community more aware of what they are actually doing to women. I hope that scientific research and funding can be put in place so that researchers can figure out how to keep women from needing this surgery at all, or at least how to replace all the hormones their bodies lose. The pharmaceuticals we have now are not enough. Some women can’t handle the bioidentical hormones and need synthetic. Some women can’t handle the synthetic and need bioidentical. There are not enough options for customization for women to pick from. The medical community must think it is one size fits all for all ladies. Something needs to be done, because other women who have had these surgeries as a necessity like I did, will find themselves in a surgically induced, new medical situation, with not much support or help. It has to stop.

This article is in honor of Mary Brite, who over the years constantly encouraged me to write and share my story.

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Hysterectomy, Hormones and Suicide

by Robin Karr

Published on June 21, 2017

35005 views

It may seem like quite the leap from hysterectomy to suicide, but it really isn’t a leap at all. Hysterectomy with ovary removal induces what doctors refer to as “surgical menopause.” There’s really no such thing as “surgical” menopause. Hysterectomy with oophorectomy is the female equivalent to male castration and as such carries with it all the risks and associated hormone changes that one might expect when primary endocrine producing glands are removed. The precipitous drop in hormones, much like those experienced following childbirth, can and does have calamitous effects on mental health, not to mention physical health. Perhaps the only difference between male castration and female castration is the fact that female castration is performed regularly and without regard to the physiological and psychological side effects that ensue.

Why Write about Hysterectomy and Suicide?

I decided to write this post because I was castrated, against my will, without consent and have struggled with a myriad of health problems ever since. You can read my story here, here and here. In the years since my ovaries were removed, I have worked hard to spread awareness about the devastating health consequences that this common surgery elicits. Over those years, I have heard from hundreds of women who have experienced similar suffering.

“I was a bright light until a doctor murdered me on (she gives the “exact” date of her surgery). Only a woman with a complete hysterectomy can remember that date. I have had surgeries before, but I never remembered any of those dates. You will always remember when you went into have something done simply to stop heavy bleeding and going in as one person and then the doctor switching you with some kind of alien when you wake up. Within a year, I was 50 pounds overweight and my thyroid had a nodule on it that was cancerous. I had the worst fatigue and suicidal depression there could be.
I can’t believe I made it. I remember telling my 10 year old I didn’t want to live anymore and he kept saying “don’t say that momma, yes you do”. There is no one that could ever comprehend this hell unless they have been through it. I’m overweight with fibromyalgia and fatigue, talking myself out of suicide constantly. I have metabolic syndrome and I’m insulin resistant. I have constant lightheadedness, difficulty swallowing, broken out and dry skin. I have never even tried to go back to having sex simply because I stopped dating. I stopped being the happy, vivacious, beautiful woman I once was. I have been to 45 specialists in the last 10 years including Mayo Clinic to the point where I know I know more about hormones then they do!”

Another woman wrote to me recently stating she too was suicidal just thinking about the 1 year anniversary of her hysterectomy. She wrote:

“Exactly one year ago today, I was on an operating table being castrated and mutilated – the pain too much to bear. I wish I could stop this rapidly aging skin, body and hair loss. My body and soul are devastated. Shaking and in utter disbelief. The person I was before died the day of hysterectomy: my life, body, personality and every other aspect of the life I once knew is dead and over.
So, it is a rebirth of this hideous and painful existence of a stranger living inside a new broken body, soul, personality, etc. I very much relate to Frankenstein who was created in a laboratory unwillingly and without forewarning (informed consent) and awakened to a strange world he could not relate to nor understand. He was full of pain inside and out with all of those gory stitches, having to learn to walk, talk and the great torment he had of being here. Frankenstein is a fictitious character, but I can relate, for I, feel like a monster. I would give anything to be whole again. I know what I now am, and that is a “Castrati” and “Eunuch”.

More recently, a good friend that I came to know through my website committed suicide after years of struggling with post hysterectomy health issues. Before she died, Toni sent me her story in her own words and asked me if I’d post it on my site so other women could be warned about what life post-surgery is really like. She didn’t want what happened to her to be in vain. She wrote in part:

“I am a changed human being. I sometimes do not even want to get out of bed. My poor husband… he misses the woman and wife I was. She is gone. She was taken the day I had a hysterectomy. I am a “shell” of a woman now.”

This shouldn’t happen. Young women should not be castrated and then thrust into a world of ill-health and darkness. Hysterectomy, especially when the ovaries are removed too, should be an option of last resort, not something cavalierly recommended to young women, nowhere near menopause.

I wrote this post for the women who have lost their ovaries, lost their health, their vitality, their sex lives and their hope. I am not sure that I can give you hope, but I can give you a voice until you can find your own voice and together we can stop this practice and prevent other women from suffering.

Natural Menopause, Hysterectomy and Castration: It’s all about the Hormones

Natural menopause. It is important to talk briefly about the effects of “natural” menopause in order to better understand the effects of hysterectomy and castration. Even natural menopause is a “game-changer” for most women with some of the more commonly discussed symptoms being hot flashes, mood swings and dry vagina. ACOG lists over twenty adverse effects of menopause in their Menopause Patient Information Pamphlet including but not limited to: hot flashes, insomnia, dry/thin vagina, increased risk of urinary and bladder infections, increased bone loss and risk for fracture, loss of heart protection and increased risk of heart attack and stroke, emotional changes such as nervousness, irritability and fatigue, loss of libido and difficulty achieving orgasm. There are more symptoms not specifically listed, but these are enough to take your breath away. It is important to keep in mind that these symptoms develop gradually over years during the natural process of endocrine senescence or aging. The process is complicated and researchers still don’t understand the full spectrum of changes that happen when women age. Some hormones decline, others increase to compensate, immune factors are involved and the entire body changes to adapt to the new reality. The experience of menopause in each woman differs with some experiencing very few symptoms and others experiencing great difficulties. The key points are that menopause is gradual and complicated. It is not just the removal of estrogens and progesterone. Many other hormone systems recalibrate.

Hysterectomy without Oophorectomy. Hysterectomy without ovary removal is common. The thought is that if the ovaries are left in place, vital hormones will continue to be produced and circulated. To some extent that is true and women who retain their ovaries seem to fair better than those who do not. However, hormones work through feedback loops, the uterus contains many important hormone receptors that communicate with the ovaries. When the uterus and cervix are removed, those receptors are removed too. Without those receptors, communication ceases and the ovarian production of hormones will cease as well; more gradually than if the ovaries had been removed, but more rapidly than in natural menopause.

Castration. When the ovaries are removed, we call this castration. It is no different than removing a man’s testicles. Oophorectomy precipitates a radical change in hormones overnight. Symptoms hit within a matter of hours rather than years. Ovary removal is akin to a ‘cold turkey’ full throttle withdrawal from very strong drugs, the complexity of which we still don’t fully understand.

Concentrations of the estrogens and progesterone drop to nearly nothing, almost immediately, while testosterone concentrations decrease by half. In natural menopause, the adrenals can pick up some of the slack and produce more estrogens and other hormones, but with oophorectomy there is no time, just an immediate crash; a crash that most women, their families or their physicians are not prepared for, because nowhere in the literature given to the patients is this discussed.

Female Castration According to Experts

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) calls female castrations ‘surgical menopause’ and although they recognize the severity of hormone changes in their professional literature: “The effects of surgical menopause are severe due to hormone levels decreasing all at once,” the severity of the hormone dysregulation initiated by surgical menopause is not even mentioned in their patient literature: ACOG’s Hysterectomy Patient Information Pamphlet. In fact, the term “surgical menopause” is not even used. Instead, the pamphlet says

“Depending on your age, if your ovaries are removed during hysterectomy, you will have signs and symptoms caused by a lack of estrogen, which include hot flashes, vaginal dryness and sleep problems. You also may be at risk of a fracture caused by osteoporosis at an earlier age than women who go through natural menopause. Most women who have these intense symptoms can be treated with estrogen.”

There’s no mention of castration or even the more benign term surgical menopause. If these terms were mentioned, some women might think to look for a pamphlet about those topics. In other words, they’d connect the dots. As things stand now, there are no dots to connect. The severity of the side effects are downplayed considerably.

The Myth of Hormone Replacement Therapy Post Hysterectomy

To make matters worse, many castrated women are left with no way of supplementing the hormones they’ve lost. They’re simply sent on their way. Others are prescribed a “one size fits all” hormone therapy such as Premarin which is derived from the urine of pregnant mares. While it may work for some women, it comes with serious side effects and doesn’t seem to work for women who have been castrated, likely because the ovaries produce more than just the estrogens and synthetic hormones are not capable of replacing what the body produces on its own.

“I am a 46 old and had a hysterectomy for which my uterus, cervix and both ovaries were taken in 2011. This was due to having endometriosis since I was 22 and having it laparoscopically removed three times, for which my doctor had advised to just have total hysterectomy instead of surgeries. I, however, wanted to hold on to my ovaries. That day did come that I agreed to have all removed, and can I say that I count that as the last day of my life. I have been living in a life just short of a Stephen King novel. I decided after surgery to wing it with no HRT at all and done that for a whole year. In 2012, I decided to try Premarin at the suggestion of my doctor. This was because of the night and day sweats, intense cold spells, horrific mood swings, insomnia, drastic weight gain, memory loss and forgetfulness and loss of libido to name a few symptoms that had gotten to me severely. The hormones worked for 1 month. Then all symptoms came back with a vengeance! My doctor wanted to double my dosage of premarin, but my scare of cancer quickly stopped that. I am now holding on day by day. I have lost half of my hair since coming off HRT. Every day, suicidal thoughts are in my mind, I mean it is all so hopeless to me. Just wish I could reverse the surgery, but that is not possible. HELP”

Sadly, many doctors even prescribe psychotropic drugs, as if they could somehow replace a woman’s own natural hormones.

Depression Post Hysterectomy

Depression is a very common problem for women who’ve been castrated, but one that is rarely acknowledged appropriately. Given the vast biochemical changes a woman’s body is thrust into, it seems likely that she could be propelled into a severe depression and should be warned accordingly, before the surgery.

To better understand how traumatic castration can be, consider a few things we now know about women going through “natural” menopause: 1) women going through natural menopause are three times more likely to be diagnosed with depression than the general population 2) this is true even when there is no prior history of depression and maybe most surprising 3) natural menopause is a time in a woman’s life when she is most likely to commit suicide. Of course, women who’ve been castrated are at the highest risk of all due to the immediate drop in hormones and the severity of symptoms. Add this to the fact that a castrated woman’s adrenal glands are suddenly placed under the extreme stress of taking over for missing ovaries and other organs throughout the body become likewise stressed. All of this additional stress on the body’s organs and systems can, of course, lead to diabetes, autoimmune diseases, heart disease, brain diseases, cancer, etc.

Depression Post Female Castration

Depression brought on by castration is unique in that it only happens to women undergoing this certain type of life change – this specific surgery. It’s much more than just a bout of the blues. It isn’t a weakness or flaw in character, nor is it something that you can simply “snap out” of. No – this type of depression may require long-term treatment. Stanley West MD, author of “Hysterectomy Hoax”, wrote “…this is much more than the blues; it is serious enough to require hospitalization for some women, lengthy counseling and drug treatment.” The chemical imbalances brought on by castration can lead to a woman becoming clinically depressed. And if the depression continues, then suicide becomes a genuine risk factor.

Is There Help?

So, where exactly does a castrated woman turn for help? Since this type of depression stems from an imbalance of hormones that includes the loss of vital estrogens, progesterone, and androgens, hormone therapy becomes all the more important since it raises those levels again to some extent. However, castrated women may also require a wide range of hormone supplements. Combinations of estradiol and estriol may be necessary and these should be balanced with progesterone and sometimes testosterone. DHEA might need to be added too. Because sex hormones are important to so many other hormone systems in the body, a woman who has undergone castration may also need supplements to help with her thyroid and adrenal glands.

For counseling, reach out to the resources in your area. A brief list can be found here.

Castration requires close follow-up care. And yet, very few doctors seem to be seriously engaged in helping castrated women regain their health and vitality. This is yet another reason women become depressed. There’s really nowhere to turn for help. Instead, most women find out very quickly that all of their post-surgery “complaints” will be dismissed as a mental problem of some sort. ACOG mentions only one reason for “emotional changes” post-hysterectomy: “Some women feel depressed because they can no longer have children.” Personally, I’ve not heard from one woman who said they felt depressed for this reason. The women I hear from tell me they’re often made to feel that nothing is “really” wrong with them – that it must all be in their head. In short, they’re made to feel “crazy”. But the issues are real. Read any of the stories below and there is no doubt that the suffering is legitimate. Hormones impact brain chemistry as well as every other physiological system in the body. Remove a primary source for those hormones and there will be problems. How can there not be?

The Reality of Ovary Removal

This is what women who have been castrated say about their lives post-surgery. Let me warn you: it’s not pretty. Please note that some comments have been edited for brevity. It’s the same story over and over and over again. Only the names change.

“I have not been the same woman since my hysterectomy. Within one week of surgical menopause, at age 42, I became clinically depressed. It went downhill from there — no sex drive, weight gain, anxiety plus depression, bone loss and energy loss. Basically, I’ve felt like I was falling apart. I have been on the estradiol patch and an antidepressant since my hysterectomy. I would have kept my ovaries if I had known what would happen.”
“I had a hysterectomy 2 years ago. Since then, I have had nothing but trouble. The surgeon took away my ovaries, so I have no estrogen in my body – only testosterone. This makes me very angry all the time. I refuse to take HRT because my mother had breast cancer. I have no interest in sex whatsoever, and am on anti-depressants all the time. Hysterectomy has ruined my life, and if I could go back, I would not have had it done. I would have just put up with the fibroids. My advice to anyone contemplating this is to think long and hard. If there is an alternative route you can take, do so! I would not wish this on my worst enemy!”
“I will be turning 40 this year and 3 years ago I had my hysterectomy. Ever since then, I have not been the same. I’ve gained weight, have hot flashes, aches and pains everywhere and am moody. If I had to do it over, I would never have a complete hysterectomy. I used to be full of life and now all I want to do is hate the world or cry over everything.”
“When I woke up in ICU almost 24 hrs later with a tube in my throat I motioned for a pen and wrote the word hysterectomy with a question mark. I don’t know how I knew, I just did. After the doctor carelessly punctured my uterine artery he decided that the best way to fix his mistake was to take out everything that made me a woman. He nearly killed me. They had to give me 15 units of blood while they frantically carved out more and more. He never even came to see me after he butchered me to explain what happened or why he ruined my life and my families’ future. I have never seen him again. I am 35yrs old in surgical menopause. Some days I wonder if my young husband will leave me for a woman that can still have children. I have never posted a comment on any site about anything. I read your story and felt that you were the first person that knew what I was feeling.”

Sadly, there are more similar hysterectomy comments and stories on my website which I refer to as “hysterectomy hell”. You can read those stories here and here. There are forums and blogs all over the Internet too where women gather and pour out their inner-most feelings about their lives after surgery. Most women can’t sleep, so they reach out during the night for help, seek answers for what’s happened to them and otherwise just try to fill the void.

Families of Women Who Have Been Castrated

One adult child wrote about her mother’s hysterectomy:

“After we moved to a ranch house in an exclusive residential suburb of Minneapolis when I was 8, my mother stopped singing. That wasn’t the only change in her during the summer of our elevation from middle- to upper-middle class. Her hair seemed to turn white very suddenly and her personality altered just as drastically.
I learned to test the air when I got home from school, trying to discover what mood she was in that day: playful, full of games and secrets, or grim and tight-lipped, on the edge of tears.
Later, I discovered from old medical records that Mother had had a hysterectomy during the summer of our move, when she was only 38. Being plunged into early menopause could explain her mood swings, I now realize, the tearful scenes, the tranquilizers, but then my 8-year-old mind developed a theory that my sweet, raven-haired mother had somehow been kidnapped and replaced by a white-haired virago who resembled her. I remember poring over the family photographs in the mahogany sideboard, trying to determine when the substitution had taken place. Mother never sang to us again after that summer and when we asked her to, she replied that her voice was gone: ‘I’m too old to sing’.”

I could share so many more heart-wrenching comments and messages like these, but I feel I’ve shared enough to substantiate that women who undergo hysterectomy and castration, especially when uniformed, misinformed or not informed at all, suffer beyond words really and so do the families. There’s certainly no shortage of post-hysterectomy horror stories. Maybe woman who undergo hysterectomy and castration to save their life are better able to cope. I don’t know. What I do know is that far too many hysterectomies are performed for other reasons and many of those women feel extremely betrayed. They never get over it as the many comments here suggest. In the case where there’s no consent, hysterectomy and castration is considered assault and battery. That’s criminal and that’s a very big deal. Women who’ve been surgically “assaulted” have even more trauma to come to terms with. There’s not much a woman in this situation can do other than file a medical malpractice suit against her doctor. Maneuvering and enduring the legal system is yet another nightmare all its own and isn’t a reality for most women (“victims” in the case of unconsented surgery).

There can be no question that so many women are experiencing profound depression. This is not something we can continue to ignore. This is a very real problem everybody should take seriously. After all, we’re talking about over half a million women going through this every year just in the United States alone. From a public health point of view, depression is a substantial illness with significant morbidity for patients (and their families). If the depression continues, then suicide absolutely becomes a genuine risk factor. It is so important for families of women who’ve undergone hysterectomy and castration to realize how serious the resulting depression can be and what it can lead to.

Personally, I’d love to see a huge drop in the number of women undergoing these mostly “unnecessary” and “elective” surgeries. Until such time, we’ve no choice but to begin this discussion in hopes of saving precious lives. Depression can be managed only when we talk about it openly – when there is no shame. Managing depression may include: hormone replacement therapy, talk therapy, proper diet, exercise, meditation (including prayer of course) and medication too if necessary. While I’m no psychologist, I can tell you what has helped me survive post-hysterectomy depression. I’ve learned that it is critical to fix what’s fixable. Restore balance back by doing what you’re still able to do – whatever that is; it will be different for every woman. Like the “Prayer of Serenity” change what you can, deal with the rest. We all only have so much energy left after such a life-altering surgery, so we need to learn to focus and use our energy on things we can change. This is by no means easy to do.

My Story

To be completely honest, I still struggle with depression since my unconsented hysterectomy. I guess I always will. And yes, I’ve been suicidal at times too. And while there may not be a “cure” for this type of depression, it helps a lot for women to know and understand they are not “crazy” or alone. Before social media and personal computers, women mostly suffered in silence. There’s no need for that today though. A doctor from Australia who specializes in menopause and hormones once told me not to waste what I’ve suffered and so I’m trying to follow his advice. Specifically, he said

“You can’t waste what you have suffered. Others need not just to know, but to understand the depth of that hole, and how hard it was for you not just to climb out of it, but how hard it was to even have the energy or will to turn around as you plummeted to the bottom. And more than anything, they need to know that you can!”

So, we absolutely must start talking about the hysterectomy hole. We must share our stories so that others do not suffer as we have. And doctors too must stand up and speak out. If you’d like to share your story here on Hormones Matter, Write for Us.

Help us understand the consequences of hysterectomy – take a survey. The Hysterectomy Survey.

Sign a Petition to End Unnecessary Hysterectomies

Contact the Author

Website: Hysterectomy Consequences
Blog: Hysterectomylies
Twitter: www.twitter.com/jiggaz31
Facebook: www.facebook.com/hysterectomyconsequences
change.org petition: Help Stop Unnecessary Hysterectomy and Castration

This post was published previously in July 2014.

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Medical Rape: Coerced Hysterectomy, Oophorectomy, and Lymphadenectomy

by June Gardner

Published on June 13, 2017

23543 views

I was one of those lucky women who never suffered any gynecological problems in the 58 years I had my precious female organs fully intact. I trusted the female GP who did my yearly Pap smear (which she insisted I have every year, despite never, ever having abnormal cells). I did not know she was in cahoots with corrupt gynecologists looking for easy prey to perform hysterectomies. She forced me into seeing a gynecologist, writing that I had post-menopausal bleeding. This was a blatant lie, as I NEVER had a single drop of blood since my menopause finished 5 1/2 years before. She would not take “NO” for an answer. She did everything to gain my trust, so I didn’t understand what was going on. She wore me down until I gave in. I went to the gynecologist she referred me to so he could examine me, say I’m fine and send me home. I’d never seen him before in my life.

As soon as I sat down, he opened the referral, and the first words out of his mouth was: “You have bleeding. I’m giving you a curettage.” I was shocked. He didn’t ask me one single question, and he didn’t examine me. I said I had no bleeding and I’m not having a curettage, but he would not take “NO” for an answer. He already had me booked in for the pre-admission and the curettage at a hospital I’d never been to before. I was not told that it is my choice. He manipulated and coerced me until I gave in.

At the post-op appointment two weeks later, he said that I had cancer and had to have a hysterectomy. He’d already sent the referral to a public hospital I had never been to before, and was not told was a teaching hospital. I only went there to be examined, told I’m fine, and sent home. The Clinical Fellow in Gynecology/Oncology called me in after the waiting room was empty. He then mentioned the bleeding. I was so angry, I said:

“Why do you people keep saying I had bleeding, when I hadn’t had a single drop since my menopause finished over five years ago, until I was given the curettage and bled for 3 days.”

He ignored me and told me he was going to take out my cervix, my uterus, my Fallopian tubes, and my ovaries. And he was going to do it by laparoscopy, but still may have to cut me open. Again, I was shocked. I said:

“I have no bleeding, no pain, no symptoms whatsoever, and begged for another option.”

His face was full of anger and contempt as he yelled at me:

“YOU HAVE NO OTHER OPTION. YOU SHOULD CONSIDER YOURSELF LUCKY YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE CHEMOTHERAPY. NOT LIKE ALL THOSE WOMEN IN THE WAITING ROOM”, and he flicked his hand toward the empty waiting room and said: “THEY WEREN’T SO LUCKY”.

I was shocked.

He then answered every question I asked with:

“You’ll be fine,” and insisted I go in, in two days.

Next, he shoved a piece of paper in front of me and pointed where to sign. He did not go through one thing written on that consent form. I asked him if he’d done laparoscopy surgery before, and he looked me in the eye and told me he’d done hundreds, that he could do them with his eyes closed. A blatant lie. I did not know that after I left, he added on the form he bullied me into signing that he may take out some pelvic lymph nodes as well. He sprung that on me just before the surgery.

To make a long story short. He mutilated six organs from my body, and God knows how many lymph nodes, as that was covered-up. He botched it beyond repair leaving me wailing in agony every day and bleeding out since he butchered me in June 2005.

The morning after he slaughtered my organs, he smugly told me that I was as clean as a whistle; that all my removed organs had been healthy.

He removed healthy organs.

I was coerced into having an unneeded hysterectomy; a hysterectomy that has left me in agonizing pain ever since. For what? Profit? Medical training? I don’t know, but I am devastated.

When I tried to bring a complaint against him and the hospital, the whole system took his side and did everything to discredit me and spread the word I was paranoid. They denied that I was in any pain, and kept sending me to psychiatrists who just kept pushing drugs on me and telling me they found nothing wrong in the tests when I kept telling them how much pain I’m in.

I’ve never in my life been touched by such evil. I was a victim of fraud and criminal medical malpractice, and my health and my life has been destroyed by those evil doctors. Why aren’t women warned about these corrupt doctors who trick healthy women into unnecessary hysterectomies. This surgical racket has been going on for decades and will never stop because the system is geared to protect doctors, and not patients, from unnecessary harm. As Dr. Phil Hammond said: “The system is still geared to protecting doctors’ reputations rather than protecting patients from unnecessary harm.”

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oophorectomy - Page 2

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