Reply To: Tissue repair pain – Pinto Mike M

[Mike M]

@Chuck

Pain tolerance for me is probably pretty normal / typical.

I had pain the first few days like most people with no mesh open tissue repair. It fades overtime. First day was as most people described, rough, moving micromillimeters at first to get to the bathroom etc, but by the start of the 3rd you can get around pretty decent but still being careful. 5th day I walked up multiple levels @ the top of the Lotte tower (one of the tallest buildings in the world). I took some very basic pain meds after the fact (I think it was just tylenol) for the first few days.

The biggest thing for me was the “Tension” for the first few weeks. This was likely due to the fact my hernia was bigger than average and also could be because I was probably close to the upper end of the “acceptable” BMI for the best tissue repair doctors like Kang, Yunis, and Sbayi. If I went to the Shouldice clinic I would have had to lose “30lbs” by their metric. LOL!!! But in their defense they probably would have settled on ~15lbs for a real BMI count because of my muscle and height. Just speculating based on other feedback from past patients.

I was determined to do No Mesh, Open Tissue repair regardless of whatever Mesh expert claimed. I am not a doctor but I researched enough information to know that an open tissue no mesh method would work for me in my circumstance regardless of all the Mesh nonsense blah blah.

The biggest challenges I knew I would have to overcome is accepting the initial pain (it was no where near my limit but not painless either), taking it easy for a bit (I set my limit at 6 months), and continuing progress on getting back into shape / building core (doing great so far).

I had pros and cons going for me into this surgery. Pros: Younger patient, no history of health issues, self created defected?, lost weight prior to surgery. Cons: Still had some weight to lose to be at the “technical” shouldice limit (not enough to be a critical issue with an actual real surgeon w/ bulletproof technique), medium size hernia?, symptoms occurring prior to surgery (still reducible, nothing insane).

Chuck you are going to have pros and cons going into it just like me. I set my expectations accordingly based on all the knowledge I had accumulated from doctors, patients, and research posted. If you are expecting zero pain you are fooling yourself. It is going to hurt decently for a little bit then it fades like any other operation. This includes the “tension”. It could take a few weeks, it could take a few months, it could take a year. Everyone is different but it does fade if it is successful and completed by a competent doctor.

I knew my operation wasn’t going to be the most difficult (at least I hope it wasn’t Dr. Kang) and I knew it wasn’t going to the easiest. It was probably harder than most patients Dr. Kang sees because of my size. I also knew that the recurrence rate regurgitated by the populous of mesh doctors was [email protected]$ especially as it was applied to the Shouldice Clinic, Dr. Kang, maybe Dr. Yunis?, etc. so I was determined to do it and do whatever I could do for it to be successful post op.

Edit: Also most everyone I saw who had the operation just walked out right away from Dr. Kang’s clinic with minimal pain exactly how it is described on his website.