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I’ll never recover from the procedure that was done to me.
Hey everyone, I’ve ranted on here plenty of times since I’ve had the worst procedure a human can have with Dr. Brown but I wanted to post this more serious post.
Its been nearly 19 months since I’ve had a nightmare ”sports hernia repair” with Dr. Brown and its become clear that I will never recover from this. I was told I could have never sustained this level of damage/impairment due to natural causes even if I kept professionally dancing on my injury for another 5 years. And sadly I am not the only one who has had this exact outcome. There is another patient of Dr. Brown who has a whole website/blog post dedicated to her story and how he made her worse and she had to get a severe reconstruction afterwards – and there are more but she’s the one that made it public on a website.
Which brought up the question – was this malicious intent? Or was it gross incompetence? I genuinely believe its the latter. I don’t think Dr. Brown even understands the gravity of what he did to my tissues because he lists my operation almost step by step on his marketing website sportshernia.com as his official procedure. This tells me this man has no idea how the human body & muscles interact together or what he’s doing really. In his mind he is patching a shed or a hole in a wall when these are living tissues with tension & strength running through them.
I also want to preface this with the fact that I specifically asked Dr. Brown ”please do not cut into any healthy tissues. Only repair what needs to be repaired, but do not cut into an obscene amount of tissues I need to have a functional core for my career” and he said ”I promise I will only cut into whats necessary and go slow – I promise the procedure will not impact your core strength/function”.
Now think of every muscle, tendon, ligament as elastic bands under tension. They carry a force/strength. They need to be able to passively and actively contract, relax, and cohesively work together as we move. Even though muscles can be identified independently, they very much rely on each other being functional to function. Nothing works alone, no system gets injured by itself – everything is one big continuation throughout the body. This small concept is important to understand how bad my situation is and how ill never recover from this.
Now with this elastic band analogy in mind. Think of a single elastic band under tension attached to two separate ends. If you make a small cut in the middle of it, the rest of the band will tighten to maintain the tension but won’t fail it will simply become increasingly stressed as the rest of the structure tries to compensate for the weakness where the cut is – it will tighten to compensate until the cut has been repaired. However if you cut enough of it, or you cut a rectangular strip out of it, or even two strips, the elastic will eventually fail and no longer be able to hold the tension. The structural integrity is compromised to the point where structurally its unable to hold tension it was holding anymore and goes limp. Even if you repair/glue/put the strips back and restore the elastics structure, that tension is gone.
Now back to the groin. Specifically let’s focus on my left groin (the same thing was done to me on both sides but since my left side was the one with no previous procedures, its the best suited to exemplify why the procedure is at fault and not any pre-existing condition).
When I first injured my groin, it was something that appeared over time. It wasn’t acute, it wasn’t a big tear and it wasn’t a hernia. I had 4 MRI Scans & 3 Dynamic Ultra-Sounds and they showed that I had a 1 inch tear in my external oblique aponeurosis. I still had strength, tension in my groin but it was exceedingly tight because every structure was trying to compensate (*maintain the tension/strength) even though the structural integrity of the tissue was compromised (1 inch tear in the ”elastic”). It was mostly tightness & a nagging burning pain that wouldn’t go away.
Since the area has really poor bloodflow and your groin is nearly constantly under some kind of load (as you walk or do anything in life really), that 1 inch tear was not able to heal by itself. At this point what Dr. Brown was supposed to do is simply surgically close that tear and allow me to rehab the tissues. It couldn’t have been more straight-forward.
Instead what Dr. Brown did was extend the tear in 2 directions (cause more damage to the structure) and carved out two strips out of the tissues to the point where the structure (elastic) was unable to maintain structural integrity and completely released (went limp). Not only that, but he dissected my spermatic cord from the pubic bone and freed it all the way back up to the internal ring (despite no previous spermatic cord pain or issues) and then took it upon himself to cut through the entirety of my inguinal floor (that did not have injury on that specific side), furthermore causing a complete release of all the strength/tension in my groin. He basically sliced me open through 3 layers of tissues.
A 1 inch overuse tear became a multiple inches cut with strips carved out, dissection of my spermatic cord and complete destruction of my inguinal floor. He then proceeded to reconstruct my floor (Which didnt need reconstruction when I got there), and he sutured the two strips carved out of my external oblique on top of each other (instead of restoring the tissue back into one piece).
Now here’s why I haven’t improved in 19 months, why I’ll never recover and the endless list of issues I’ll have to deal with for the rest of my life because of this procedure.
As you can see, all the steps Dr. Brown took completely destroyed the structural integrity of the tissues in my groin, meaning they completely released a lifetime of strength/tension and went completely limp.
Because the external oblique stretches from the ribcage to the pubic bone as a continuous flow (elastic), the procedure effectively completely released my external oblique (as the structural integrity was broken through his insane amount of cutting). Its limp and has been limp since I got the procedure.
The rectus abdominis relies on the obliques health/tension to be able to function/activate. Because the external oblique is completely limp and unable to hold strength – the rectus is unable to hold strength, flex, or do what its supposed to do either. My entire core is suddenly dysfunctional and limp.
Because my entire core is suddenly dysfunctional and limp, my back muscles are completely dysfunctional. Your abs & back muscles work together to stabilize your body, they are dependent on one another. Think of the bicep & the tricep, antagonist/protagonist muscles.
Not only that, but the inguinal ligament strength is dependent on the health & strength of the external oblique as well. Because it went completely weak and limp and because Dr. Brown sutured new attachments directly into my inguinal ligament, the inguinal ligament is COMPLETELY limp. No strength, no tension. The inguinal ligament is THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT structure when it comes to groin stability & strength and by extension hip stability.
This causes my hip to be unstable/unable to stay in proper alignment and my other hip flexors to be dysfunctional as well.
Because my hip flexors and hip are unstable & dysfunctional (due to the groin beind completely limp) – my knee is unable to stabilize. In 12 years of professional dancing I had ZERO knee damage. Zero. Verified multiple times with scans throughout the years.
Since Dr Brown mutilated my groin, I’m on pace to need a complete knee replacement in both knees in the next few years. And this is just from going on a 30 minutes walk 3 times a week with my 65 years old mother, and walking around the house. Thats the extent of physical activity I am able to do since getting this surgery. I used to be in rehearsal and working out 8 hours a day for the last 12 years without an inch of damage to my knees.
Not only that, but the groin health & function also impacts glute activation and the strength of the inguinal ligament and hip flexors impacts all the way down to my achilles tendon. Again because the whole chain went limp, I now have bilateral achilles tendinopathy and progressive damage.
I can keep going but the point I am trying to make is – I will never recover from this. And it was completely senseless, useless and avoidable. Everything Dr. Brown did he did because he thought he was ”strengthening” my groin by carving out flaps & overlapping tissues because he treated the tissues as inert tissues. As he would treat a pair of jeans or wood or any other construction material. But these are live tissues, elastics, that hold tension, that passively and actively flex & release and function in harmony as we go through our daily lives. You want to do the absolute least amount of damage possible and maintain structural integrity.
My only option would be to get a complete reversal where another surgeon has to go back in and reconstruct and restore the structural integrity of all the tissues Dr. Brown butchered, but as explained during my elastic analogy, the tension is gone. If you take an elastic stretched across two points under tension, and you cut the elastic in the middle (releasing it completely), even if you re-attach it it will never have the same elasticity or load capacity as it first did. So I will effectively be dysfunctional from head to toe like this for the rest of my life.
Not only that, but I do not have the funds and I am absolutely terrified of doctors going forward. I cannot understand how this happened to me in today’s day and age. I have severe PTSD and trauma. I have a huge patch of hair that turned grey. I have not had a good night of sleep in 2 years. I wake up every single night in tears. I am unable to function in society. My 65 years old parents have to take care of me and I am basically bound to staying still because even just walking 3 times a week 30 minutes a day is completely grinding down my knee joints. If I keep walking I will eventually need knee replacement. My career is gone, my dreams of having a family is gone, and so on.
And to think that it took under 1 hour and 45 minutes for Dr. Brown to do this to both sides of my groin and permanently alter the rest of my life. A lifetime of competitive sports, professional dancing, thousands of hours of conditioning gone from my tissues, released, never to be recovered. Its like all those hours spent working out, training, in rehearsal, were wiped away in 1 hour and 45 minutes. Its quite frankly unbelievable.
If I had the choice to go back and be in the amount of pain I was in before the surgery – I would take it in a heartbeat. I was in pain yes but I wasn’t disabled. I was still able to do what I love, I was working, I had somewhat of a life, I was going on hikes, etc. Sure I have less groin pain now but at what cost?
Sorry for the long walls of texts and the posts. I always tell myself I won’t post again. But I have to tell people my story. I want to believe that it will help someone avoid having their lives ruined the way I did. And I hope that if another doctor will read this and maybe rethink their own approach or work ethic when it comes to groin injury and patients long-term well being.
I will try to make this my last post on here. Quite frankly I’ve been looking at ways to end my life because I am just a burden to my whole family and I have no quality of life whatsoever. I went from being the pride of my family, working in LA, asked to perform at the Grammy Awards, made the front page of the newspaper, was on TV, etc to being essentially disabled. I am in permanent pain, my body is continuously breaking down from head to toe. I will not be able to return to sports or my career, or have a significant other, or have a family and raise kids. I am not even able to play with my 3 year old nephew. Every single day I go to sleep I secretly hope that I don’t wake up the next day.
Take care of yourselves people. You only have 1 body and as you can see one bad doctor can seal your fate forever. Good luck to everyone on here I’ll be rooting for you.
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1 Reply
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How does groin pain and dysfunction lead to needing knee replacements in 3 years if you’re starting with healthy cartilage and barely walking it all anymore?
There is a lot of psychosocial stuff going on in this post…
Dr. Brown was one of the only people dealing with sports hernia type things in his day. There is newer technology and people that have more resources at their disposal now. Before you lose hope I suggest you see one of them. Are many people here with the great deal of experience remediating these cases.
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