Posted on 01/04/2006 10:30:56 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
JERUSALEM (AP) -
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon underwent hours of surgery after suffering a life-threatening stroke, but doctors resumed operating early Thursday after a brain scan revealed he required more treatment. Powers were transferred to his deputy, Ehud Olmert.
Sharon fell ill at his ranch Wednesday evening and was rushed to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, where he was diagnosed with a cerebral hemorrhage. Doctors began emergency surgery about midnight to stop "massive, wide-spread bleeding" in his brain.
Media reports said the surgery had ended after more than six hours. But Hadassah Hospital Director Mor-Yosef said that while the bleeding had stopped, Sharon was returned to surgery in "serious condition."
"We are continuing with the same operation, and there are more areas that need to be treated," Mor-Yosef said without elaborating.
Surgery apparently had been complicated by blood thinners he had been given following a mild stroke on Dec. 18, and the medication may also have contributed to Wednesday's stroke.
Mor-Yosef did not address Sharon's prognosis, but neurosurgeons not involved in Sharon's treatment said a full recovery was not likely following such a massive stroke. They said it usually takes at least a day after the surgery to determine the extent of any damage.
Olmert was to convene the Cabinet at 9 a.m. for a special session.
An ambulance brought Sharon to the Jerusalem hospital only hours before the hard-charging, overweight, 77-year-old Israeli leader had been scheduled to undergo a procedure to seal a hole in his heart that contributed to a mild stroke on Dec. 18.
Sharon's cerebral hemorrhage, or bleeding stroke, came at a time of upheaval among Palestinian factions in Gaza and in the midst of both Israeli and Palestinian election campaigns. Sharon's absence would slow momentum toward peacemaking with the Palestinians and leave a major vacuum at the head of his new Kadima party, which was expected to head a government after the March 28 vote.
In a written statement, President Bush praised Sharon as "a man of courage and peace," saying he and first lady Laura Bush "share the concerns of the Israeli people ... and we are praying for his recovery."
Israeli Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger called on Israelis to read Psalms and pray for Sharon. "We are very, very worried," he said, and prayed for "mercy from Heaven."
Pan-Arab satellite television broadcasters beamed out largely straightforward, nonstop live coverage from outside the hospital where Sharon - a particularly despised figure among many Arabs - struggled for his life.
A radical Palestinian leader in Damascus, the Syrian capital, called the stroke a gift from God.
"We say it frankly that God is great and is able to exact revenge on this butcher. ... We thank God for this gift he presented to us on this new year," Ahmed Jibril, leader of the Syrian-backed faction Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a small radical group, told The Associated Press.
Speaking to reporters outside the hospital, Sharon aide Raanan Gissin warned Israel's enemies: "To anyone who entertains any notion to try and exploit this situation ... the security forces and IDF (Israeli military) are ready for any kind of challenge," he said.
But a Palestinian commentator on the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya network offered Sharon unexpected praise as "the first Israeli leader who stopped claiming Israel had a right to all of the Palestinians' land," a reference to Israel's recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
"A live Sharon is better for the Palestinians now, despite all the crimes he has committed against us," said Ghazi al-Saadi.
Sharon's personal physician said early Thursday that he expects Sharon to emerge from surgery "safely."
"The prime minister is currently in surgery, it is proceeding properly," said Dr. Shlomo Segev. "We need to wait patiently. I expect him to emerge from it safely."
Doctors said chances of recovery were slim.
"It's among the most dangerous of all types of strokes," with half of victims dying within a month, said Dr. Robert A. Felberg, a neurologist at Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans.
"The fact that he's on a respirator means it's extremely serious," said Dr. Philip Steig, chair of neurosurgery at Weill-Cornell Medical Center in New York.
Dr. Larry Goldstein, director of Duke University's stroke program, said much depends on the extent, location and duration of the bleeding.
"Bleeding in some areas of the brain, if it's caught early enough, you can actually have not a bad outcome," he said.
Sharon was put in an ambulance at his ranch in the Negev Desert after complaining about feeling unwell. The stroke happened during the hourlong drive to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, Dr. Shmuel Shapira of the hospital told Channel 10 TV.
Doctors checking Sharon late last month said he weighed 118 kilograms (260 pounds) at the time of the first stroke but had since lost more than 2 1/2 kilograms (six pounds) and was otherwise in good health. Sharon is about 170 centimeters (5-foot-7).
The prime minister had been taking blood thinners since the first stroke to prevent another clot, but such drugs also raise the risk of cerebral hemorrhages, which account for only about 10 percent of strokes. Other possible causes are ruptured blood vessels, an aneurysm, or bulge in a vessel wall that bursts, or even chronic high blood pressure.
Security agents and police spread out around the Jerusalem hospital before Sharon arrived, setting up a security perimeter. Later, they surrounded Olmert's residence in Jerusalem.
Cabinet Secretary Yisrael Maimon said Sharon's authority was transferred to Olmert because the prime minister was under general anesthesia. Under Israeli law, he will serve as acting prime minister until Sharon can resume his powers.
On Dec. 18, Sharon was taken to Hadassah Hospital from his office after suffering the mild stroke. Doctors said he would not suffer long-term effects, but they discovered a birth defect in his heart that apparently contributed to the stroke.
Sharon had been scheduled to check into the same hospital Thursday for a procedure to repair a tiny hole between the upper chambers of his heart. Doctors said the blood clot that briefly lodged in Sharon's brain last month, causing the mild stroke, made its way through the hole and from there to a cranial artery.
Sharon first came to prominence as an army officer, setting up a unit that fought Palestinian infiltrators in the 1950s. Advancing through the ranks of the army, he served as commander of the Gaza region after Israel captured the territory in the 1967 war, launching punishing raids.
After serving in the 1973 Mideast war, Sharon left the military and entered politics, forging the hardline Likud Party, which came to power in 1977.
As defense minister, he directed Israel's ill-fated invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and was forced to step down by an Israeli commission of inquiry, which found him indirectly responsible for a massacre of Palestinians in two refugee camps by Christian Phalangist soldiers.
Sharon re-emerged as prime minister in 2001, and two years later he reversed his course of decades of support for Jewish settlement construction and expansion in the West Bank and Gaza, promoting a plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank. The pullout was completed in September.
The withdrawal fractured his Likud party, and he left it to form Kadima with a platform of seeking a compromise for peace with the Palestinians. He was putting together a list of candidates for the parliamentary election when he fell ill Wednesday.
In the March 28 election, Sharon had been expected to face off against Benjamim Netanyahu, the tough-talking former prime minister who recently won the Likud primaries, and Amir Peretz, the union leader who recently unseated veteran Israeli politician Shimon Peres as head of the liberal Labor Party.
Olmert, who could emerge as Sharon's successor in Kadima, would likely have a far tougher time beating either Netanyahu or Peretz than Sharon would have.
According to Israeli law, Olmert as deputy premier assumes the post of prime minister for 100 days if Sharon becomes incapacitated. Then, Israel's ceremonial president would meet with political leaders and choose someone to form a coalition government.
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My father in law , when he was about 83 or so, had a major stroke, he was on coumadin, had adverse reaction to it, then was put on Heparin, had to take a shot in the belly every day for a few months,
I'm not sure what they had Sharon on here, oral meds(likely warfarin/coumadin) or injections (Heparin), but in cases where cerebral hemorrhaging occurs, the odds are pretty low as the article states for survival much less recovery.
As Andrea Boccilli sang, time to say goodbye.
farewell ariel, you are a hero, your country will be forever in your debt. we can only hope that your legacy of peace thru strength (and good fences make good neighbor) will survive your passing.
MR Political Roundup - 2006-01-04
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First what we do know: First, Ariel Sharon's political career is over. He will not recover fully from this operation, but even a miracle will not allow him to either run for or to execute the duties of an office. Channel 10: "for the next few hours, every Israeli is going to be a doctor. And they're listening to what the real doctors are saying, and that's that Sharon won't be Prime Minster at least for the next few months." Second, there will be elections in Israel on March 28th because last month President Katsav acceded to Prime Minister Sharon's request to dissolve the Knesset. But that's exactly all of we what we know right now.
Before this tragedy, Israel was already in a kind of double political limbo: not only had the Prime Minister just dissolved the government - so the executive and legislative branches were lame ducks - but the lame-duck government itself was controlled by a party that had never been elected. Sharon, having left the Likud party to form Kadima, managed to convince an incredible number of Israeli personalities and ministers to abandon life-long commitments and come with him. Several of the most powerful officials in the Israeli government right now have thus never been elected as members of the party that they're ostensibly members of. But Sharon was on track to guiding Israel through the government-less, party-less limbo. His own personal popularity was going to bring enough votes to ensure that the same people - but not the same party - remained control. After his series of chaotic electoral tricks, Israel was supposed to have a soft landing where everything fell into place without any dramatic changes. But without Sharon holding everything together, Kadima is a party with no base and no infrastructure - and now with nothing to make voters ignore that.
The legal situation is unprecedented. Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert not only takes control of a country that has never voted for him, but he takes over as the representative of a party that he doesn't lead. Kadima has never had a public discussion over who should lead it, let alone a formal primary (Sharon was personally deciding the order of Kadima's election list, and Kadima was supposed to grow party roots during the next government). Adding Sharon's responsibilities to his own previously substantial ones, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - a former Likud member who left with Sharon - now holds more cabinet portfolios than the rest of the cabinet combined. Channel 10 asked a legal expert for his opinion about what Israel's bodies of laws says about this situation. Answer: "in my opinion, this is totally beyond the scope of anything the law has to say." Awesome!
In the meantime, politicians across the spectrum are declaring that they're praying for Sharon's fully recovery. And as very-lefty Yossi Beilin said on TV this morning, prayers "aren't nothing". Netanyahu and Peretz mean those prayers. Everyone is very, very nervous about the chaos and uncertainty that Israel is about to face. The Likud has all but officially canceled their plans to resign from the government on Sunday (where they are still technically ministers), while Peretz - who had already taken Labor out of the government - has placed himself "at the disposal" of Olmert.
Kadima
Even while Sharon was healthy, Kadima was a 'virtual party'. It had no elected leader and, to be totally technical, it probably had no actual members. Just a bunch of people who were going to be come members when they were elected in March. Despite this, yesterday morning Israel time brought a poll that showed them winning more than one-third of the Knesset. Now nobody knows.
All of the analysis that we've been hearing this morning links the party's continued viability on Olmert's ability to (a) become powerful very, very quickly and (b) get the party to somehow officially designate him as its leader very, very quickly. Odds that either of those things will happen are difficult to determine - for instance, nobody knows how or where Kadima would hold primaries (or who would vote in them). There are a lot of really talented politicians who have risked their political careers on Kadima, and they probably can't go back to their old parties (Peretz was already stacking Labor with his union friends before Kadima existed, while everyone knows [Netanyahu] to be vindictive and petty). So there are a lot of really big brains with an incentive to make Kadima work.
But even that may well end up being a problem - too many egos and no one able to manage them. On Channel 10, Ariel Doad (definitely misspelled) - presumably an expert - was unequivocal: "Kadima is dead". That may be too quick - Olmert has three months to prove that he's able to lead the country. But he has to act quickly to demonstrate that he's even going to be running as a leader of anything. If he fails, Kadima will either fall apart of appoint someone else as head - someone on Channel 10 just said that Kadima's only option might be Shimon Peres, although some bloggers have been throwing around Shaul Mofaz's name this morning (Jonathan Zasloff, Meryl). We literally have no idea what the election would look like in either of those cases. Certainly Kadima will not get the astronomical mandates they were thinking of just 12 hours ago.
Likud
The Likud is led by Netanyahu, who managed to permanently piss off the party's natural, working class constituency when he was Treasury Minister. Those votes were all supposed to go to Kadima. These are working class people, mostly secular and mostly right-wing. Exactly Kadima's demographic. Now they have to choose to either vote for a middle class party (e.g. Shinui - not working class), or a religious party (e.g. Shas - not secular), or a left-wing party (e.g. Labor - not right-wing). Or they might hold their nose and vote for Netanyahu. But they probably won't do that. Where they will go is anyone's guess.
Likud was supposed to get trounced in the coming election. There was no reason to vote for a right-wing, secular party while Arik Sharon was guiding Israel along a measured but security-minded path. The talk has been that Labor will recover many of the votes they've lost to Kadima in the last weeks, but its the Likud ex-pats who are going to be looking around and scratching their heads.
Labor
Here's the problem with Labor getting back some votes: Amir Peretz can be seen as an Oslo-style, terrorist appeasing, union thug. Not everyone sees him as all of those things, but most people see him as at least one of those things. Labor's fortunes had been dropping precipitously in recent weeks, as voter excitement over a change in Israel's political climate gave way to the realization of what that change was. Security still dominates Israel's agenda, which disadvantages Peretz in two ways - he concerns himself mostly with domestic issues and, when he deigns to discuss foreign policy, it tends to be in terms that... er... do not appeal to people looking for a strong leader. If Olmert comes out of the gate looking strong, it could turn out to be that only a trickle of voters will return to Labor.
Sharon was not the only Israeli alive capable of negotiating the diplomatic and military situation that Israel finds itself in - he was the only one capable of handling the political crises that he put Israel into and that he intended to lead Israel out of. What will happen to the politicians who left careers in other parties to join him - planning to ride his popularity until Kadima could grow roots - is anyone's guess.
Posted by Omri at 11:01 PM
Posted by Omri at 08:13 PM
Posted by Omri at 07:45 PM
Posted by Omri at 06:16 PM
Posted by Omri at 05:09 PM
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Sharon's Health Problems Bungled
God has a way of putting good men in the right places at the right times when it matters most.
Israel and the Jews likely would not have survived otherwise were it not so.
Go bravely into the dark night, Ariel, and embrace the light in the distance.. Peace.
Thanks.
Palestinians celebrate whenever jews die, whenever americans die (remember 9/11?), whenever suicide bombers die....basically it is a culture of promoting murder and death.
no wonder israel is building tall fences.
It's an awful culture!
Absolutely. My Grandfather was taking coumadin after an arterial stent (it reduces the chances of forming a clot) and had to be weaned off of the med before going back in for another procedure.
As I recall it took quite some time for the coumadin to get out of his system. Mr. Sharon might not have had that time.
JERUSALEM (AP) -
Israel TV reports Ariel Sharon undergoing second brain scan.
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JERUSALEM (AP) -
Hospital director says Israeli leader Ariel Sharon's stroke surgery has ended and he has been transferred to the intensive care unit.
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Sharon is a mixed bag but prayers sent for him and his family
Prayers for a warrior for peace.
G'
Nite
G'
Nite from here also...
Prayers for the Old warrior!
It takes several days(actually about 5) for either a dosage to take affect or to wean a person off of coumadin. It has saved my life for years due to my having had valve surgery and atrial fib(two things that may cause blood clots)It takes monitoring and dillegence, the first year is the worst because if differs from person to person and the docs can make some mistakes, but if you keep your diet constant and watch for signs of bleeding(bruises, blood in the urine etc.) and get tested once a month( sometimes more)you can live a normal life without fear of bleeding to death. However, if you do have a bleeding stroke you will be in more danger than a person who is not on coumadin. Coumadin(or Warfarin)is also used as a rat poison (the rats bleed to death). Operations on persons who are coumadin and are in need of emergency care, such as Sharon, can be given shots of vitamin K which will immediately counteract the coumadin.
Oops. lots of typos in my #35 post. Sorry everyone.
Coumadin does work by blocking vitamin K and giving K will reverse it, but not immediately. That just enables the liver to resume production of the vitamin K dependent clotting factors and producing them naturally takes some time. The preferred quick emergency fix at least used to be giving them fresh frozen plasma to rapidly replace the missing clotting factors. As a Dermatologist I haven't needed to stay up to date on this, perhaps something fancier is the preferred fix now. On a separate issue I presume the "heart defect" he was scheduled to have fixed was a small atrial septal defect. I don't understand the delay in fixing it. Here in Iowa I think such things can be fixed in the cath lab almost as quickly as they're diagnosed using a nifty new catheter that threads through the hole and unfurls on each side of it as a patch. It was written up in our local paper a year or two ago as being done here. Either his hole was the wrong size or location for this fix, their was some short term contraindication other than the coumadin, or the PM of Israel doesn't have access to as good medical care as is available in the Quad Cities.
I read somewhere he was having injections so I would imagine it is something like heparin as I am not sure that warafin can be injected.
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