A Very, Very Painful Decision

El Pais, the newspaper that first broke the story that bad medical care may have been the cause of Fidel Castro's extremely slow recovery has another article out. This one reportedly uses sources that are doctors at the hospital where Castro underwent surgery. The article says that Castro and his advisers are the ones who decided that a risky procedure should be used rather than a colostomy.

After removing an inflamed piece of Castro's large intestine in an operation last year, the doctors connected the remainder directly to his rectum, rather than attaching a colostomy bag, El Pais said, quoting two medical sources at Madrid's Gregorio Maranon hospital. The operation failed when a suture burst.

"The Cuban dictator and his advisers are the ones who decided on the surgical technique that has led to the complications," the paper said.

While the newspaper article did not name the sources, one of the journalists who wrote it told The Associated Press that both were doctors at the hospital. The journalist, Oriel Guell, said none of the information in articles published Tuesday and Wednesday came from surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, who flew to Cuba in December to treat the 80-year-old Castro.

Garcia Sabrido, the hospital's chief surgeon, declined comment Wednesday but said in an interview posted on CNN's Web site that El Pais' account of Castro's condition being grave was wrong.

"According to my information, there is even some progressive improvement," Sabrido was quoted as saying. "The only truthful parts of the newspaper's reports are the name of the patient, that he has been operated on, and that he has had complications. The rest is rumors."

The "recovery" is taking much too long and they know it. I've known people who had open heart surgery and recovered much faster. None were 80 years old, true, but the operation for open heart is generally a much worse one than removal of inflamed intestines. Cuban officials are spending a lot of time denying this at the moment. If Castro did make the decision as the report states, then he has caused his own agony. There is a certain ironic justice in that, isn't there?