future of inguinal repair and PT

groundfaller
Quick dumba$$ question to you. (Excuse my ignorance)

1. Before surgery did you find details of how good is your surgeon? What are the surgeon’s ratings? Patient reviews? How many specific hernia surgeries did he do? (Not ventral, and other hernias but the type you had). Is he a general surgeon who does hernias, cuts, bones and all those? I would not go to a general surgeon who claims he can ALSO DO hernia surgeries.
2. Did/do you have any allergies for mesh material (I do not have any allergies so I assume mesh would not cause me any).
3. Did you feel like superman immediately after surgery and started your rigorous biking/exercize less than 2 or 3 weeks after surgery?

IMAO (A = arrogant) surgery *IS* surgery. It is like wearing eye glasses. You can see well after wearing glasses but it will NEVER be the same like not having to wear one. A famous surgeon once told me – once the body loses the natural thing, it can be fixed but will NEVER be the same. Even now though I have no pains I do not lift heavy stuff. Those days are gone. I do not want to risk getting hernia on my other side since who knows, what may cause it. The proven thing I know is, I had hernia and weak pelvic floor and it is in my family genes. So be it and I accept it. I had my superman days when I was in 20s and 30s. I am good for my age and can run, jog and do other things but will NEVER be the one I used to be in my 20s. Period.

Lastly I want to mention this. Even the surgeon who did work on your hernia cannot be faulted, if he did the job. For two reasons are 1) nobody can give you a gurantee of how the mesh would behave once inserted. It is completely different from person to person. Did your mesh migrate? Did it have a hole? My surgeon said there is less than 1% chance for recurrence on surgery side but there is 18% chance for hernia on the other side (non-surgical side). If you go to a mesh removal surgeon he may or may not agree that mesh was causing the problem because there are so many factors involved – allergies, mesh material, migration, shrinking, your own body reactions to an outside material, you name it. It is hard to pinpoint one thing.

Unfortunately there is no foolproof method to diagnose a hernia before surgery and problems after surgery. Thats the bane of all this.

Before concluding, have you considered resting the surgery area for over 6 months to see how the recovery happens? I understand that outdoor activities are great for you and may be a necessity but does rest help? You can probably start a note on daily basis of what activities cause pain, what does not and how the day to day rest/activities are helping/troubling.

And did you talk to your original surgeon again and what does he say now? If he says it is all in your head, he really did not know what hernia surgery is. That much everyone can say.