My Spleen Was Removed in 2001.

In Ayurvedic anatomy and physiology, the spleen is called pliha, and it is the mula (root) of the channels which carry blood (rakta) throughout the body. It is the origin point of blood vessels, plays a significant role in blood purification, immunity, and metabolic functions, and is therefore closely involved with all major cardiovascular function.

I remember my first blood test, first needle in the arm, first IV. The walls in the waiting room at BC Children’s were blue, and heavy CRT screens hung in the corners playing cartoons. There were tables with crayons and scrap paper. Maybe 25 chairs where sat patients. A service desk was cut into the far wall, and a nurse welcomed my mother and our paperwork. A requisition had been issued to piece together the differential diagnosis puzzle. Two questions hung heavy in the air: why was my recently injured right eye still bleeding, and what were the red marks on my skin?

The spleen is an organ located in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen, protected by the lower left ribs, below to the diaphragm and behind to the stomach, in close proximity to the pancreas. By those with knowing hands, it can be palpated on the back side of the body. It serves many functions.

It was 2001, and I sat in a chair too high for my feet to reach the ground, for the first of many hundred times, and waited. That’s when we started keeping score, keeping track of the numbers representing the chemical balance of my bloodstream as the single most important indicator of my health.

Eventually, my name was called, and a woman in scrubs took us through back rooms full of recliners. She explained the procedure, showed us the vials, and eventually pulled out the butterfly needle. Seeing its translucent tube, I wept, I screamed, I tried to convince them not to do this. But the nurse and mother coaxed me through, and my initiation was complete. The pinprick pain was nothing, but the young child knew how blood matters, that the channels flow full of life.

The energetic role of the spleen is to provide rhythm and flow. It grounds you, it is the seat of discipline and concerted effort. It is related to Manipura chakra, the third energy center located in the upper abdomen, the Solar Plexus Chakra. It grounds our personal power, self-esteem, and transformation. It is fiery, yellow in color. It governs digestion, metabolism, and the sense of self, fostering confidence and purpose when balanced, but leading to issues like low self-worth or ego problems when blocked.

The test tubes went off to the lab, and we went back to the haematology ward to wait for results. My blood was quickly quantified, and found to be miscalibrated. This was an emergency. I had severely injured one of my eyes, and I was bleeding. My mother was told I was at risk of spontaneous cerebral hemorrhage. The diagnosis came quickly, the most important symptom being severe platelet deficiency, the lack of an essential clotting factor.

In the allopathic paradigm, the spleen is a filter for blood, and it stores blood to be used in case of hemorrhage. It is a vital organ in the body’s blood-production and immune system. It produces white blood cells to fight infections. The spleen breaks down old red blood cells and recycles components.

Mine was surgically removed because it had a chance of inducing remission of acute immune thrombocytopenia. The theory was that my spleen was responsible for miscalculated destruction of platelets, and haematological procedure at the time was to remove it, as splenectomy had been found to restore regular platelet counts in roughly 50% of cases.

So my mother made hard decisions and followed the doctor’s recommendations. Within days I was medicated, immunomodulated, and set for a laparoscopic splenectomy, the surgical removal of my spleen.

The procedure was common practice in the late 90s, but now the existence of new immunomodulatory pharmacy has rendered surgery an absolute last resort except in cases of splenic rupture. Not only that, but the medical consensus is now that the spleen is of vital importance for the function of the organism. Splenectomy leaves the patient at lifelong risk of infection and sepsis. To counteract this potential post-surgical infection, I was prescribed preventative antibiotics, which I took every day for 10 years.

Modern surgery found that it could restore a semblance of homeostasis in my bloodstream by removing an organ that is considered absolutely vital to the creation and circulation of blood in two other major health sciences. Whenever I’ve told a TCM doctor or a Vaidya that my spleen was removed, they’ve gasped, aghast.

In Chinese medicine, the spleen (Pi 脾) serves the functions of storehouse and digestion. The Spleen is a key Zang organ responsible for transforming and transporting food into nutrients and governing fluids, controlling blood in vessels, and distributing them throughout the body. It is associated with water metabolism, muscles, and thoughts. The spleen has a distinct channel (or meridian) pathway that runs along the inner leg, thigh, and abdomen to the chest and tongue. When the spleen’s function is impaired, you can expect digestive issues, poor appetite, bloating, loose stools, as well as excess worry, rumination, and anxiety. Loss of capacity for grounded presence.

The synthesis picture of the spleen we get with these three paradigms is this: this organ is of primary importance for the regulation and production of blood. Surgery’s solution to my blood clotting problem, which it diagnosed was potentially caused by the spleen, was to remove the organ entirely, to excise the organ traditionally profoundly linked to the function of controlling the blood. The paradox boggles my mind.

I need to pause here. I hate this mode, where I’m supposed to be the expert on my own condition, on the anatomy and physiology of 3 different paradigms. This is exceedingly difficult for me. Wouldn’t it be enough to say that removing my spleen was a medical mistake? How am I supposed to find the ground when it was removed from within my trunk? A colleague tells me I’m disciplined, to have so much drive for “wellness.” I tell them I don’t have a choice. I outsource my rhythms to my practices because my body’s drummer was excised as a “cure.”

We—my mother and my 5-year-old self—knew nothing of the efficacy of herbalism as practiced by TCM and Ayurveda. We knew nothing of acupuncture, Abhyanga, marma, or Tuina, so many techniques used to balance the body’s vital forces. The knowledge was simply not available to our cognitive map of medicine in Vancouver in 2001.

My mother let the doctors do what they could. What would you do for your sick child? Would you gamble with their life, just because you have a bone to pick with vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and surgery? Would you say “Oh, no thanks, we’ll keep the spleen and visit the homeopath” ?

I am working with material that was shattered from the outset by misguided and highly technical interventions of a “healthcare system” that knew nothing about how to treat me, and did more long-term harm than good. I accept my changing body. I accept that my childhood and my 20s were spent entirely on “fighting illness” to “get better.” I accept that I’ll never know what it’s like to be healthy, to have in my bones the full vitality of youth.

The truth is, we do the best we can with the information and resources available to us at a given time. When a crisis comes, we react. We do whatever seems right based on all the experience gathered until that point.

No matter how much “better” my health outcome than anyone would ever have predicted, I am a product of my time. The supercrips overcoming illness and returning to work for the banks have missed the point entirely. It’s not that I am sick or you are sick: the whole pattern has been poisoned, and we are living the results.

What if the crisis is eternal? What if it is present all the way down, and began centuries before your birth? What if you were given consciousness because the crisis pushed your parents together, and all you can do now is witness, accept, and move forward?

Autoimmunity (to get to the point of this blog) is the global polycrisis in microcosmic form, existing within the human body. The breakdown of normal life functions in response to the profound dysregulation of the social-ecological patterns between humans, the earth, and the cosmos. The rupture of the covenant. The unravelling of Logos, bios, and zoe. The loss of cultural memory. The poisoning of the water table. The generations of concerted ethnocide. Autoimmunity is all of these events, over and over again.

Are you taking someone else’s word for how you feel? Are you outsourcing your blood as much as we’ve outsourced horticulture? Are you in a hurry to move beyond sickness or injury so you can get back to living? Are you letting someone else do the work of grieving your loss? What if Nietzsche was right, and this life is meant to eternally recur? How would you do it, what would you do, if you had to do it forever?

Do you long for health because it is your perceived birthright? Do you think, have you been told, you deserve to be healthy? Did the numbers on the screen tell you you aren’t? Did you find out on your own? Did the blood in your stool point the way? The ache in your joints? The haze in your eyes? The fire in your guts? The swelling of your limbs?

Is there such a thing as ideal health? According to who? For what? When? Where? How do you know what health is and how do you know you don’t have/are not it? It is superstition to spout theory about protocol, to say: “Well, this influencer says that if I just do this and take that, I’ll be healthy.” It’s imperial religion, all over again.

That is why there is no cure. That is why I’ll be sick for the rest of my life. My symptoms and the destructive actions of the industrial society exist in complete enmeshment and can never be without one another.

“Okay, great. Thanks Laure, that’s awfully depressing. Now what?”

I can speak only for myself and my actions. I seek truth and joy. I prioritize being of service to projects and people that have a net positive social-ecological impact. I consume little. I practice the recognition that I am a small strange attractor in a much larger series of embedded systems, and I welcome dialogue that changes the way I perceive reality. I set boundaries, and I respect my own limits. I love my family, my friends, and the people I meet. I look people in the eye when we speak. I get help with my trauma and my symptoms. I attempt to recognize when I have done wrong, and learn not to repeat my mistakes.

Renouncing health is the only way to find it. Is life merely the productive development of competencies? Why? To what end? Why desire health? Health is more beautiful for having been lost. The cracks are where the light gets in. Contradiction: knowing illness brings you closer to knowledge of health. How can this be?

Health precedes all signs, symptoms, and pathologies. It is the underlying experience of joy emerging with aliveness. The experience of health is an expression of your relationship to yourself and your world. By that definition, health is available to you in the wake of all disease.

I’ve learned that to know health, I must live in my own body. Health is, simply, a felt sense of unimpeded vitality. What I mean is health is the internal experience of self/body being alive without restrictions. But what if restrictions are about how I relate to the world, rather than my physical body? What if health is about accepting my situation?

In the present moment, still, I am reliant upon the medicine of the plants, and the careful tongue analysis of my doctor. I am reliant upon my habits. I am the picture of health, but it is an illusion.

If I had critics, they may accuse me of simplifying the solution, of encouraging people not to “get better”, as if accepting their illness were enough to find peace. But acceptance is broad proposition. Even in my revulsion, I accept the broken food system; it exists. I accept that I was once dependent on synthetic pharmacy, and my quality of life was quickly improved by a pill; that happened. I accept that I was subject to a now obsolete surgery which leaves me vulnerable for life because my spleen was removed; it is true. I can’t do anything about the past but witness.

To know a state, one must know its limit, its boundary, its end. A fish knows water, but not its end. It takes water for granted. Maybe we should ask the fish what it thinks of immersion. Health is often defined in opposition to illness. What of its flourishing? I am “healthy” now, thanks to the modern applications of traditional medicines. But can health be true if it depends upon global supply chains, farms in China, and shipping infrastructure? Can I call myself healthy merely because I have energy today? Is health the control of symptoms and the tendency towards balance? Or is it the long tide, the quiet below the storm?

I suppose this project is an effort to share what my years of sickness and health are teaching me. The learning is infinite, more than I’ll ever have time to write. If you’re reading and you’re sick, know this: illness is solitary, but you are not alone, and it is the social fabric which has failed, not you.