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Athlete with bilateral groin pain – complicated – round 2
Hey everyone, this is my second time posting on these forums – the first time my post was super long – this is a round 2 with updates.
Short reminder/summary: I am a pro dancer that had right groin pain start about 3 years ago. at first it was just a burning sensation that wasnt super intense but would never leave. eventually I started being in pain but after 2 MRIs , 2 ultrasounds and 1 nerve block all they had was a suspicion of tear on the right oblique & potential nerve entrapment when the nerve injection actually helped everything around that area loosen up and provided relief. I agreed to have surgery then because I was dealing with the best doctors in my city & I trusted them. at that point I had no idea of different treatments – they told me they did the same to all their NHL players. I had a neurectomy and double-sided prolene mesh placed on my right oblique – above the exit of the inguinal canal.
I thought everything would be good from that point on but unfortunately I started almost immediately having way more pain below the surgery site & I could feel the tissue not being solid (went from solid to soft/hole like). I had brought up that there might be a tear lower down before the surgery but they couldn’t see anything on imaging & said even if there was a small tear it would heal eventually. It never did. When I first went back to dancing – I couldn’t hold my pee for more than a minute it was unbelievably painful for months. There was insane amounts of pain and inflammation in my entire pelvic area on both sides. Nobody had any answers for me so I just danced on it despite having no quality of life and insane chronic pain as well as acute pain depending on the day/the movement.
Update: I had a third dynamic ultrasound yesterday (2 years since the first surgery) with the NHL guy and he finally saw it.
On the right side – below the mesh almost right off the edge of it – he sees bulging/protruding through the tissues internally as I flex/move/push as if I had bowel movement and whatever is protruding is also sliding up and coming in contact with the edge of the mesh.
He also looked at the left side and said I had a mild tear in the oblique aponeurosis which I’m guessing got progressively worse because my right side never got better. I’ll get slight pain on bowel movement there and on exertion/at rest after exercise but localised – no pain in the testicle or inner thigh.
So this is the first time in 3 years and many sleepless night that I actually have imaging show something. The guy doing the ultrasound specializes in everything groin/abdominal and said he doesn’t even know what to call it (the right side) on the report because there’s no term for it – he hasn’t seen it yet. I haven’t seen the report yet so this is just what he was telling me in person but he said my inguinal ligament is intact – but there is bulging within abdominal tissue (not on the outside – you cant see it on me from the outside) and its sorta under the inguinal canal exit – where the oblique would meet the rectus and below/around that – and he mentioned there could be a partial femoral hernia as well but not a full on femoral hernia (he was debating with himself a lot and seemed amazed/trying to find how to explain what he was seeing). Whatever is hurting in there also sometimes causes pain/adductor muscles to literally hurt and become stiff to the point where I cant walk properly on that leg no matter how much rehab I do. My pelvic bone (right side) also hurts to the touch (a lot) – but no fracture, no stress fracture, no osteitis pubis. I guess it makes sense that there would be tearing in different layers as I have just danced 2 years on it despite the insane amount of pain.
Please also not there is absolutely no external bulging whatsoever anywhere on my body. You cannot see any of this – it’s all happening internally.
I guess I took to this forum again because I needed to write my thoughts out & maybe get some feedback:
I am a very holistic-oriented individual who believes in the body’s ability to heal itself but I also know there are limitations especially knowing how much I push my body. Even after taking 3-4 months off doing simple no-weight exercises it didn’t get better. doing full-on deadlifts didn’t make it get worse either.
So I am most likely going to go to Dr. Brown who has seen me before and have him help me. He has suggested that he would be removing the mesh on the right side if he goes in (that was even before I had this ultrasound). I don’t think the mesh itself was the problem here seeing how high its placed – but I think it is part of the problem now because whatever is torn in there and bulging through tissue is also coming in contact with the mesh. So I am assuming this is the best and only choice if I’m looking to fully recover and avoid future complications. I already had the ilioinguinal nerve taken out the first time around so I’m not very scared of having residual pain there.
The one thing that still remains unanswered is – foam in the urine. Since this whole ordeal started 3 years ago – I’ve had very obvious/intense foam in my urine. I’ve had more urine and blood tests than I can count, obviously they looked at my bladder/prostate on every scan as well and nothing. No protein in the urine, kidney function is normal, liver function normal, no infections no UTIs no STIs. So I’m wondering if when I first go the pinching pain/the original tear down there if somehow I couldve damaged anything in there that is making semen get in my urine? If I get a lot of pain on my right side one night, a good flare up – I can almost predict that the next morning I will have a lot of foam in my urine. If I ejaculate standing up – pain half the time – if I ejaculate laying down – no pain. Whenever I try to talk about it to any doctor they tell me if the foam doesn’t hurt dont worry about it but there is NO way there is no correlation here and if I’m going to go through with this and have surgery to fix the tissue – I want this to be the last one so I can go back to performing. This was also a symptom way before any surgery was done so it doesn’t have anything to do with the mesh being there – it didn’t get better or worse.
If anyone has any thoughts on this/insight/what they would do/how they dealt with mesh removal on a open pure tissue repair/their athletic ability after the surgery etc – I would love to hear about it. In a dream world I wish I could have everything fixed with key-hole surgeries with minimal scars/opening and minimal damage but I am also done having foreign bodies put in my body. I read these forums quite a lot but don’t see a lot of people stating that they are professional athletes/or push their bodies at that level – and I guess as any normal human being I am worried about everything that could go wrong even though I know Dr. Brown is a super capable and caring doctor.
Sorry for the wall of text!
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3 Replies
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[USER=”2482″]katiebarns[/USER] Try to find a doctor who get you an order for 3d ultrasound. usually academic medical centers will be best route.
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What doctor did you see for the ultrasound finally saw something? The NHL guy.
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I found that I had effects from mesh that could not be explained directly by defining specific nerves or vessels being affected. There was no question for me though that the mesh caused the problem. After the mesh was removed the effects resolved and I was back to normal. I think that there is a thought process that assumes that only tissue in direct contact with an inflammatory agent will be affected. But I think that the body might react more generally and cause unexplained side-effects.
As far as mesh removal, you have a complex hernia repair system, designed to be permanent. The damage from removal will probably take some time to recover from. Dr. Brown has a long history of working with athletes, he was on my very short list of potential mesh removal surgeons. I chose Dr. Peter Billing though because he does laparoscopic removal. Good luck.
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