Germaine Greer had another go at gynaecologists in her new book The Whole Woman earlier this month. Women are portrayed as helpless animals routinely tortured by the male-dominated medical establishment; hysterectomy as mostly an unnecessary measure forced on women by GPs' ignorance and gynaecologists' arrogance.
Well, I had a hysterectomy six months ago and it was exactly Greer's kind of rhetoric, plus the attitude of my (female) GP, who is very much against hysterectomy, that prevented my having the operation five years earlier - which would have saved me a great deal of ill-health and loss of earnings.
Greer joins many doctors, male and female, who have made light of the problems that lead women to opt for hysterectomy. 'Two-thirds of [hysterectomies in 1992-3] were for nothing more serious than heavy periods,' she says dismissively. Oh, is that all? I take it she shares the view of some doctors that lots of women, despite having had periods they found perfectly manageable for decades, suddenly start getting over-anxious about a slight increase. I somehow doubt it. I'm talking about a blood loss which caused a regular three-point drop in my haemoglobin, required two bedsheet changes a night, a large bagful of sanitary protection carried everywhere for days, and desperate worries about work travel plans.
In addition to those 'trivial' problems, which went on for 13 years, I had excruciating monthly pelvic pain, weepy depression, migraines and, eventually, large fibroids.
Alternative treatments may work in some cases but many women try a pretty wide range without much effect. I tried Ponstan (mefenamic acid), evening primrose oil, homeopathy, eating more soya, progesterone cream, endometrial ablation and Danazol - the only thing that worked, but with side-effects. Exercise, a good diet and iron supplements were the constants but did not solve the problem.
Okay, I didn't try acupuncture, but all these things cost money and I finally got tired of people suggesting my problem must be due to my whole life being out of balance, which a long session of therapy at £30-50 a time would help.
My doctor had been saying for the past 10 years that since I was over 40, there couldn't be long to go now and it would be much better to put up with it for a little longer than to undergo the trauma of an operation. I longed to believe this. Nobody could have been more resistant than I was to having a hysterectomy. The very fact that I had not had children, but a series of miscarriages, and had experienced so much grief in connection with my wretched womb, made it more difficult for me to contemplate its removal. I felt guilty towards it for having had an abortion in my early twenties and until I was in my mid-forties could not let go of the thought that there might still be a possibility of having children. I had to accept all that and finish mourning it before I could consider even having an endometrial ablation, which also makes pregnancy impossible.
Once that had failed, it was mainly anxiety about the operation itself which held me back. I am self-employed and worried about taking a lot of time off work.
When I finally went to see another consultant in a state of complete exhaustion, I was still very resistant to the thought of losing this troublesome part of me. I felt convinced that I would crumple immediately into wrinkly repulsiveness like Dorian Gray after he stabbed his portrait. I treated the consultant with almost as much anxiety and mistrust as if he'd been a known pervert guilty of the serial maiming of women. Fortunately he was polite, patient and convincingly logical in the face of my slightly aggressive objections, and besides, I had nowhere else to go.
The result was almost uncanny. All the problems were dealt with, and none, so far at least, created. Even the pain of the operation itself was much less than people had given me to believe - or perhaps they just had no idea that I'd been going through equivalent pain on a monthly basis.
'It must feel really strange to have had your womb removed,' wrote a friend afterwards. 'Like losing the centre of your being.' Not really. More like losing an incubus which for more than a decade had drained me of energy and life. That's closer to the truth than the deep psychological trauma which is so much more often talked about in the media. The centre of my being was not there; it's in my head if it's anywhere at all and my head feels a lot freer and more cheerful since it was released from the hormonal seesaw and the constant hopeless effort to recover from anaemia.
I would entirely share the anger of women on whom the operation has been done without proper consultation or the grief when it is done at a much younger age, when the womb and ovaries could perhaps be argued to be the 'centre of one's being'. I just wish I hadn't let it put me off the whole idea. It would have helped if women could have this operation without being viewed by so many female friends as a traitor to womanhood and a pawn of gynaecological control freaks.
