Susan J Bucher The following speech was presented at the
1999 Medical Malpractice I’m a victim of non-consent to a surgery, fraud, surgical abuse, battery, and of an itroepicmedic. Iatrogenic is another word for “malpractice”. It means the condition (an injury or disease) is doctor-caused. Iatrogenic events or a doctor making a mistake happens all the time. In most cases the mistake or event involves only one doctor acting on his/her own, and it’s an isolated event. The mistake creates a negative medical condition that the patient did not previously have and the condition could have been avoided if the doctor foresaw the outcome or treated the patient in a more appropriate way. With these types of iatrogenic events the typical, regular standard treatment or protocol does not commonly cause the negative condition. Other iatrogenesis events are more epidemic in nature and more widespread. These types of events have been termed "iatroepidemics", which mean epidemics or plagues caused by doctors. Dr. Eugene D. Robin, M.D. describes "iatroepidemics" as "systematic errors incorporated into medical practice". Iatroepidemics are procedures or treatments that are known to have a negative outcome that happens with the standard protocol or with the “regular course” of treatment. Iatroepidemics have certain characteristics and similarities. They tend to be procedures or medical protocols that become officially approved and sanctioned and then very quickly become a popular form of treatment. The treatments are used often by the medical community because at first they are thought to be valuable and safe and everyone in the medical community jumps on the band wagon and follows suit. Masses of people are treated the same way, all following the same protocol. Countless victims suffer injuries and bad side effects before the treatment or surgery is found or proven to “case harm”. There comes a point when the medical community notes that the treatment has a possible bad outcome. They learn before the public learns because they see first hand the same outcome over and over. Tubal ligations will always be an option for birth control for women. It's a very popular surgery and it does work. It does (in most cases) accomplish the purpose for which the surgery is intended. It stops women from becoming pregnant. But it also has KNOWN negative side effects. The medical community has been trying for decades to “disprove” the scientific findings and their own observations. The surgery is known to cause a hormonal imbalance and in some cases female castration. It’s the nature of the surgery and the side effects can NOT be avoided. The medical community has known this for a very long time, but no one is warned of this risk. Because the medical community knows of these side effects, the harm that is currently being caused to women is not only by the surgery itself, but also because women are not informed of the risks before hand. Tubal ligations do work near perfectly and should be offered to women as a birth control option, but because the surgery is "elective", and because it does have known side effects, these side effects MUST be made known to the women when they are informed about the surgery. She has a RIGHT to this information. Today it’s standard practice to have women sign a “consent” from but yet women are not informed of these risks. The consent document becomes invalid and erroneous when it's exposed and understood that the woman at the time when she signed it was not truly informed. These documents are bogus and false and were signed under false pretenses. The fact is everyone who has this surgery does so with out full knowledge of all the sides effects, and therefore without true consent. This information is significant and important for women to consider when deciding if they want to undergo the surgery or not. Withholding this information is a crime upon her human rights. With-holding this information about known side effects to tubal ligation has been going on for so long that the code of silence runs very deep and strong. I can only compare the magnitude of this crime with how the tobacco companies withheld their medical findings from the public. This information is there, the medical community knows this is a risk, but the information is not made available to the public. I am just one of many women who is a victim of this long running iatroepidemic. On August 24th, 1995, I underwent a tubal ligation (TL). I signed a consent form, but did not give consent. Information was withheld from me and I was not warned of all the risks that I should have been warned of. I was not warned that TL’s are known cause hormonal imbalances, or in some cases even known to cause surgical menopause at the time of the surgery. What the doctor DID tell me was that the surgery was safe, that TL’s did not have any negative side effects, and that the procedure would not change my health. This is what all women are told, and it's what the public at large is told. He told me that I shouldn't be on the "pill" long term for birth control because long term use of the "pill" (hormones) had negative side effects. I even asked if the surgery could cause menopause and the doctor laughed at me and told me no. He told me that the TL surgery would not alter or change my hormones and that my health would remain the same. The printed information that he gave me supported what he had told me. It was presented to me that my sex life would be more spontanois and better because I wouldn’t have the fear of unwanted pregnancy. I was told that the surgery would "enhance" my life and would have added health benefits. (less risk of ovarian cancer, but not explained the reason why) I trusted him and believed him. He had motive not to inform me. He profited from performing the surgery. If he had been truthful and completely informed me, I would NOT have consented to the surgery. The post operative reports for this surgery states, “the uterus was found to be normal in size, shape and consistency. The anterior cul-de-sac was free of any adhesions or endometriosis. The posterior cul-de-sac was similarly free of adhesions or any implants of endometriosis. Both adnexa appeared to be within normal limits.” In person he told me everything (my organs) looked great and gave me this picture. (this picture is cropped)
More than one doctor has told me that these are normal healthy looking ovaries. During the surgery he cut veins/capillaries to my ovaries causing "ovarian isolation" which in turn causes a female castration or best known as "surgical menopause". I had no idea that this could have happened or that this was a risk of the surgery. I was not warned, and afterwards I was not treated for the devistating condition that I was in. Every time I returned to the doctor he told me that what I was experiencing was normal and nothing to worry about. I trusted him and believed him. All along getting sicker and sicker. Ovary isolation causing a quick, rapid, or instant menopause is an event that the medical community commonly recognizes as being a side effect of hysterectomies when ovary preservation is attempted. The result of ovarian isolation is the ovaries, although they are still present within the body, but because of a decrease or lack of blood, become non-functional and "atrophic", which is a Greek word used in pathology meaning a wasting away of the organ, tissue and cells. Atrophic tissue is tissue that’s been affected by restricted or affected blood supply. Losing the function of my ovaries greatly affected my health and me. The negative changes were both physical and mental. The doctor went on to commit medical battery by not diagnosing and by not treating the negative condition he caused. He did this in order to protect himself and to avoid a lawsuit. This alone is bad, but by not treating me my condition worsened. I became very sick with a very serious condition that I now know was hormone shock. As time went on I got sicker and sicker. As the condition progressed I began to experience symptoms such as confusion, memory loss and loss of balance. The condition affected my eyesight, caused me incontinence, and caused me to lose my libido and sexual drive. I was deeply depressed but didn’t know why. It greatly affected my physical wellness and my mental wellness. I kept returning to the doctor and he kept telling me that nothing was wrong with me. When he did offer testing he avoided running the proper tests that would have proved my condition, but made it appear that they were the proper tests. As time went on his nurse informed me that he ran the wrong tests on me. When I was informed of this I requested that he run the proper tests to show my condition, but he still put me off. He insisted still that nothing was wrong with me and that he thought that I wasn’t keeping my calendar correctly. He gave me a shot to bring on my period and told me that after the shot that everything would o.k. I asked him what would happen if the shot didn’t cause me a period and he told me not to worry, that it worked for everyone. I was at my wits end. I didn’t want the shot, I wanted to be tested but he refused stating that this was the best course of treatment. I was very sick, not thinking right, and felt that I had no choice but to trust his judgment and go along with his course of treatment. All I wanted was my health back. The shot was an attempt to make it appear that nothing was wrong. If I got my period then it would appear that further testing wasn’t necessary. He gave me this shot to avoid running the proper tests to diagnose my true condition. The effect of female castration, even with treatment, is bad. Just ask any woman who has had a hysterectomy. It changes you. It changes the way you feel and it changes the way you think. I was in this condition with no treatment at all. I thought that I was going nuts or developing altimers and thought that I would have to soon be put into a mental instution. I could barely function mentally. I was very depressed and living in complete despair. I can only relate these events as being imprisoned. The injuries that I suffered and now have to live with are, to say the least, inhuman. I’m dealing with it the best I can. When I learned of my menopausal condition just over two years after the surgery; I sought the care of another doctor. This doctor quietly informed me that "it’s possible that he cut some veins to my ovaries during the tubal surgery". This was very upsetting to learn. The injuries and outcome of this so called "band aid surgery" and not being informed has greatly affected me and my family suffered as well. When I discovered that the TL surgery was the cause of my failing health and when I learned what being surgically menopausal meant: When I began to understand that the doctor had lied to me and then allowed my condition to worsen; That the condition he caused required that I remain on costly hormone replacement therapy (HRT) treatment for the rest of my life, just in order to function normally, and that my life span was shortened. When I learned what being surgical menopausal with out treatment meant regarding bone loss, and that now I was at higher health risks associated with the surgical menopause and being on life long HRT treatment; When I learned that he gave me the wrong medicine to treat my condition and that the medicine he gave me could have caused me to "stroke out": And the fact that becoming surgical menopause was not something I had desired, it was something that I was not warned of, and something that I did not consent to, I decided to take action. I contacted a lawyer and filed suit against the doctor to stop him form injuring more women. That’s how I can to know Dr. Hufnagel as she did my medical review. My lawsuit against this doctor was filed on April 13th, 1998. I started searching for other women that had negative side effects after their tubal ligation. I placed a personal ad in the Chicago Tribune and received many calls. On the internet I found more women who also were suffering bad side effects after their TL. Most everyone was stating basically the same. That they had a TL and afterward their health changed. They are told that their health changes are not hormonal and are refused hormone testing to diagnose their condition. I formed the Coalition for Post Tubal women to begin the process of informing women about tubal ligations. See http://www.tubal.org. During the course of my lawsuit against the TL doctor I consented to a 2nd surgery by a 2nd doctor, but ended up becoming a victim of surgical abuse, fraud, and more crimes by this 2nd doctor. I consented to this 2nd surgery because it would have given me conclusive proof about what happened at the time of the first surgery. I knew that the TL caused my menopause, but the court and other authorities would need more proof then just a time line and my word as to what happened to me. All that was known was that I had a TL and two years later was diagnosed post menopausal with extremely high FSH and LH levels which was a very good indication that this is what had happened, but not conclusive proof what happened. I knew what had happened, but I didn’t have “proof”. A biopsy of my ovaries would show conclusive proof that they were “atrophic”. Being atrophic would only mean one thing, that the blood supply had been disrupted. The 2nd surgeon presented himself to me as a woman’s health specialist. He knew and understood my circumstances. He knew that I was under duress, knew that I was involved in a medical malpractice law suit in IL and understood that the lab findings/pathology reports that came from this 2nd surgery were to be reviewed by other doctors and used in my court case. He knew that the pathology reports would be "conclusive" or "scientific" proof as to the "true" condition of my ovaries and that this information could not be argued or misstated by the court, lawyers, and other doctors. He stated to me and promised that "regardless of what he found” he would take a biopsy of my ovaries and would obtain a pathology report so I’d have this for court. This was my deciding factor in consenting to this surgery, that I would have this information. He performed a “surgery” but afterwards he withheld my medical records. I had to hire a private detective in order to gather them. Once I received the records from the private detective I learned the following: The doctor did not do what he told me he was going to do. He did "nothing" at the time of this surgery. He did NOT do the biopsy (which is why I consented to this surgery) AND he did NOT remove a cyst that was found and clearly seen on my ovary at the time of this surgery. He noted “adenomyosis”, but didn’t take a biopsy. The post medical report that he wrote is false and does not correlate with the visual that he produced. He stated that there was “free flow of irrigation through the tubes…” at the time of the hysteroscopy. I had a TL, how could they be free and clear? The tape of the surgery that was made at the time of my surgery (not yet posted) didn’t demonstrate this either. Furthermore he stated that the “no apparent cysts (were) noted on the ovaries.” The whole report is a sham. The following pictures below (in the middle and right hand colums- and they also are cropped) were taken at the time of my 2nd surgery. I’ve included the photo from above (from the time of my TL surgery, before my tubes were cut) in the left-hand column for comparison. The video, which the private detective was able to retrieve for me shows even more detail. |
