-
Standard tissue repair procedures (like Shouldice or Marcy) are a known entity and don’t change the anatomy in ways that would cause the issues you mentioned. The trouble they cause (in the bad cases) is almost always either recurrence or chronic pain.
A repair for recurrence is still possible, sometimes with another tissue repair, or more often with lap mesh. Serious chronic pain can often be treated with a neurectomy, but not always. This can be challenging with mesh as well, even with removal. I think mesh is a worse situation to deal with when it goes bad. Again, when compared to a standard tissue repair. Having said that, mesh is clearly a reasonable choice, and for certain anatomies it can be a better choice because tissue repair would be difficult or problematic.
If a surgeon rearranges your anatomy in some insane way, it’s a different situation. It sounds like this is what happened to you. However, this is not a standard hernia repair.
“Sports hernia” seems to be a term used for different types of overuse injuries which aren’t even truly a hernia. It’s really dangerous territory because surgeons get creative. It’s not a standard problem with standard well-studied surgical solutions as I understand it, but I haven’t researched it much.