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Encouraging percentages from Docs please!
As a surgeon I smile when I hear stories like yours. A healthy patient whose life was really saved by modern care. The data is overwhelmingly in favor of using mesh to repair your hernia. Recurrence rates are over 20% without mesh in the best studies and probably approach 100% if you follow patients long enough. The Rives-Stoppa repair which puts the mesh behind the muscles and outside of the abdomen is an excellent option as it avoids doing an extensive dissection around your bowels and is easy to reoperate through if you ever need that. Also, if it gets infected, it can often be treated without removing the mesh. Mesh complications, which are abundant on the internet, are actually fairly rare in practice. If everyone had problems with mesh, we wouldn’t use it. I do mesh repairs on 10-20 patients weekly, and very rarely see a complication. Pick a surgeon who fixes a lot of hernias and you like, and you will do fine. As far as what you can do, being thin, well nourished and not smoking are the biggies.