Reply To: Sexual Disfunction risk after repair

[darntootin]

Hello. To give a real-life example, I had a left inguinal hernia surgery
in November 2022. It was a recurrent hernia, as my previous mesh repair from 13 years ago had failed. My first operation was laparoscopic, while my most recent one was open.

While I can say that generally the recovery from open surgery was worse, the main problem was that I experienced extreme ejaculation pain. I first tried a week after surgery. The pain came in waves leading up to ejaculation, and at the end the pain was terrible. It was so intense that it completely removed any kind of enjoyment.

I tried once a week after that, as it was too traumatic to try any more frequently. After 4 weeks the pain subsided a little, and by week 5 it was down to a small tingle. The pain would run up the left side of my genitals, with the major pain being on the lower side, near the left testicle.

I am about 8 weeks post-op now, and there is still a small tingle in the area, but it is nothing compared to before. I also have other issues, like numbness below the incision all the way to the genitals (not the genitals themselves), and a general uncomfortable feeling all over the area, but I’m just happy the first issue went away.

I have had a followup with my surgeon who said he has never had a patient with this complication before.

I write this here because I was desperate for any kind of help during those first 5 weeks, and I found some posts here that gave me hope. I wanted to add my story so that it can maybe give hope to someone else.

FYI I have had zero problems in this area before, so I attribute all of my issue to the second surgery.