Reply To: Need advice whether to have surgery or not.

[Good intentions]

quote kevin-pa:

It’s great that the internet has allowed us to communicate quickly, research info, and have forums like this. But it also opens up the flood gates of “what-if’s” and overwhelms your mind in terms of the amount of information. I would bet the internet has drastically increased the number of hypochondriacs on this planet.

I’m going to repeat my recommendation to find a surgeon who can say truthfully that they know their patients are doing well, long-term, and that those patients do the same types of activities that you plan to do. That was my one major mistake in choosing my surgeon. I trusted him for different reasons, but afterward, when I asked those questions, to see if he he’d seen my type of problem before, I found that many of his patients just moved on to other surgeons. I found that he just couldn’t accept that I was having problems, and eventually tried to push me off to other doctors. He even suggested medicating the problems away.

It was just his nature as a person. He was more business and procedure oriented than patient oriented. I was in and out and back home within a couple of hours for the repair, which was impressive. Coming back with problems wasn’t expected. It wasn’t in the business plan. As it turned out, he did have resources to seek advice from, which he eventually said he would do, but he had delayed and avoided for two years. And when he found that I had found another possible solution, he never came back with the information that he said he would.

So, there are very well-trained professionals out there who will do a great job of performing the procedure. But will be completely lost if you have problems. Since you’re active, playing soccer and things like that, I would put extra effort in to finding a doctor who knows that their method works for athletes. I tried to do that before my repair, I was just like you are, an active person who was worried and skeptical, but I couldn’t find anyone. And you can’t just call them up and ask, you have to make an appointment and wait and pay, and eventually your insurance company will stop paying.

The internet, unfortunately, is the best resource for information right now. You just have to sift through a lot of material to find something to grab on to.