HYSTERECTOMY: Learning the Facts, Coping With the Feelings, Facing the Future

A clinical psychologist serves up a quick rundown on all aspects of America's most frequently performed surgery, with particular emphasis on the psychological and physical problems that frequently follow. The author provides a checklist for evaluating the physician and advises that, apart from cancer and emergency situations, ""you should consider a hysterectomy only after more conservative treatment methods have been tried and found ineffective."" She then whisks the reader through hospitalization and the operation itself, with a mere page on the serious complications associated with it. The rest of the book is concerned with its other aftereffects: mourning for ""lost reproductive capacity,"" depression, hormonal and other problems that produce hot flashes and mood swings, or make sex painful or distasteful. She provides a fairly detailed discussion of treatments and special exercises that can ameliorate these problems. It's rare to fault a book on a woman's issue for being too brief; but many readers will want considerably more information and may resent Wigfall-Williams for sending them elsewhere to get it. After all, they could do that themselves, without benefit of this volume.