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Hey AJM sorry for the delay in reply my car got stolen last week and I had to deal with that for a few days, I’ll try to summarize the situation here so its clear.
5 years ago while teaching a class I heard a cracking sound in my groin followed by a sharp pain that then went away in a couple of hours. I then started to have a continuous ache/pain in my groin. I had an MRI done that didn’t show anything. I had a dynamic ultrasound that found my adductor tendon was partially torn at its insertion but was not painful to the touch and it wasn’t where I was feeling the pain. They couldn’t find anything else in abdominal tissues. They did a diagnostic injection nerve block on the ilioinguinal nerve and I got a small amount of relief but not completely. In retrospect It wasn’t the nerve but at the time I needed to get back to dancing asap as I had just gotten my artist visa and the dance agency sponsoring me was waiting on me. So my local doctors decided to remove part of my ilioinguinal nerve on the right side hoping that it would give me relief and that whatever else that might’ve been going on would just heal naturally since it wasn’t big enough to be found on imaging and left a gore-tex non-porous mesh over the canal, under the external oblique to “strengthen” the area. They said they routinely did this to Olympic athletes and some hockey players. The whole thing lasted less than 25 minutes outpatient and I walked out of the hospital.
This was the only surgery I had before Dr. Brown. My inguinal floor was not touched since it wasn’t torn, the external oblique was closed the same way it was opened. No loss of strength or effect on my core from that surgery, just some soreness/tightness near the scar that healed in a couple of days. My left side was healthy at the time so no previous surgery there. I went on to dance for 2.5 years full-time after that. I had pain but at least my muscles were functional.
Then 2.5 years later I had Dr. Brown’s surgery bilaterally. He did the same surgery bilaterally the only difference being that when he did the right side, he opened the external oblique and the gore-tex mesh was still sitting there so he just pulled it out. It hadn’t scarred and no muscle tissue had grown on it due to the nature of the material it was just sitting there over the canal. Came out as clean as it went in, it didn’t need to be carved out of me with a bunch of bloody tissue attached to it like the other mesh horror stories you see. Dr. Brown himself said it was his first time seeing a non-porous mesh. My local doctors said they had put in that type of mesh specifically so that it didn’t adhere to anything and cause any issues. It was also his fire time seeing a mesh that wasn’t on the inguinal floor but rather was over the inguinal canal. I can send you a picture of the mesh after it was taken out if you want it looks like a piece of white cardboard there’s nothing to it.
And yes, when I agreed to surgery Dr. Brown said my left side (the one that did not have previous surgery) would be back to 100%. It still had full strength it was just starting to get injured and I wanted to catch it before it got bad. Obviously that was a mistake.
He said the right side should be 100% as well but could be as low as 80% since I had previous surgery. He did not say there was a chance it wouldn’t be success or that I would have severe weakness/tension release he just said there was a possibility that the right side could have either residual pain and only be at 80% which was an acceptable risk to me.Feel free to DM me if you have specific questions you’d like to know