Ariel Sharon, Israel’s Prime Minister, underwent four hours of emergency surgery on Saturday to clear a blood clot in his intestines that took him to ”the verge of death”.
Sharon was rushed unconscious into the operating theatre in the morning — for his seventh operation in five weeks — after a scan of his stomach revealed that his digestive tract had been seriously damaged. Restricted blood flow raised the possibility of necrosis, or the death of tissue.
Family members, including Sharon’s two sons, Omri and Gilad, rushed to the Hadassah Ein-Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem, where he has been treated since 4 January after hospital officials announced that his condition had worsened. Later in the day Sharon’s chief political confidant, Dov Weissglas, and other members of personal staff were joined by acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the hospital to be briefed on Sharon’s deteriorating condition.
The day of drama began at dawn as his medical team became concerned about Sharon’s condition following a CT scan. As Sharon was operated on, Yael Bossem-Levy, a hospital spokesperson, announced: ”Sharon’s life is in danger.”
The 77-year-old, who failed to regain consciousness after collapsing at his ranch five weeks ago, was rushed into surgery for an emergency laparoscopy, in which a tube is inserted into the body in an attempt to open the obstruction.
Doctors have been criticised for treating Sharon with massive doses of anticoagulants after his first stroke, which was caused by a small blood clot in a cranial artery. They admitted that the anticoagulants made it more difficult for them to stop the bleeding from the later haemorrhagic stroke.
The extensive bleeding and the lengthy operations Sharon underwent to stop it had led experts to conclude that he must have suffered severe brain damage and was unlikely to regain consciousness.
Demands have grown for an investigation into the way that Sharon has been treated both since his stroke in January, and following a smaller stroke on 18 December.
And it has not only been the treatment that has been questioned, but the wisdom of keeping alive a man who some doctors believed should have been allowed to die a more dignified death at the time of his second stroke instead of condemning him to a slow and lingering death.
For the last six weeks the drama that has been played out in what some Israelis have come to call the Mausoleum, although its occupant was not yet dead. That name has been applied to the seventh floor of the Hadassah Ein-Kerem Hospital, where a peculiar ritual has been performed that is only reserved for Popes and heads of state.
Surrounded by tight security, Israel’s leader has been the only patient on the seventh floor. Members of Sharon’s tight circle of aides and advisers have come and gone, at first occasionally uttering angry comments, as the theatre of his declining health has unfolded.
However, as the weeks have passed by since his stroke, the hopeful bulletins concerning Sharon’s condition have become fewer and more terse. Israelis did not believe them anyway. Even those who have prayed for his survival recognised them as examples of ”Israbluff” — official spin.
With the Israeli elections due in March, and with Sharon determined after the first stroke to lead his new centrist party Kadima, was it the case, the Haaretz newspaper asked, that the electorate had been misled about his ability to continue? – Guardian Unlimited Â