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Temporary shouldice?
Hi there – this is my first post, glad to be here 🙂
Mine is quite a long story! I’m in the UK and am 50 years old, fairly active, eat well, a good weight.
I was diagnosed about 3 years ago with a right inguinal hernia, it wasn’t really causing me any problems so I was advised to wait and see. So far so good.
Then at the end of Feb 24, I was diagnosed as having a gangrenous appendix and had emergency surgery to remove it. The surgeon knew I had a hernia but said that it was too close to my appendix to operate on it – I was already on an NHS waiting list.
About 3 weeks later, my hernia suddenly got quite big and painful and I ended up back in hospital again. Turns out that my gangrenous appendix had caused a large abscess to grow and the abscess had grown inside my hernia, which is apparently extremely rare. My hernia had got trapped by the abscess, though not strangulated, and was not reducible.
So, I had further emergency surgery to drain and remove the abscess and then open surgery to repair my hernia. By all accounts, it was a long and complex surgery and I was kept in hospital for 7 days.
I didn’t know much about hernia repairs – my partner kept telling me that she knew people she worked with who’d had mesh repairs and weren’t happy with them. When I got to speak to one of the surgical team the next day, he said that they had repaired my hernia based on the shouldice method and, when I finally read up on this, I was fairly pleased.
My recovery was slow, understandably so – I’d been through a lot! The 7 days in hospital were brutal and then the first two weeks at home were difficult and then I began to be a little more mobile and things started to finally improve. I lost almost 10kg in weight in the aftermath of both surgeries – most of it has returned now. I’m now almost 7 weeks on and I can maybe walk for a couple of miles in a day. But a few days ago I sat hunched over for maybe 30 mins and it hurt quite a bit around the area where my hernia used to be and has been uncomfortable since then – 3 days or so now. I’m hoping this is normal and that the pain goes away soon but I am a little concerned.
It’s interesting reading recovery accounts with people saying that they are still feeling discomfort 6 months after surgery – but I’m still a bit nervous and anxious based on the infection and abscess I had but it does feel like I have gone backwards a little. The whole experience was genuinely traumatic, so it is not surprising that I am on edge a little.
I’m not due to speak to my surgeon for a couple more months (this is the NHS after all) but I do have a couple of questions.
One of the surgical team said something to me and I’m not sure what they meant. A few days after the operation, he said that I’d only had a temporary repair and that I would more than likely be back in hospital within 6 months to get it repaired properly. I’ve read everything I can about hernia surgery and a temporary repair has never been mentioned anywhere. Nobody else mentioned it and I was told that I could return to normal activities whenever I felt up to it after 6 weeks had elapsed. I never thought to ask any further questions, I just wanted to get home and, to be honest, I was on a pretty high dose of pain meds – so I may have missed a few questions!
I’m hoping my current discomfort is ‘normal’ – any thoughts? I am still mobile, limping a bit more than normal and I wouldn’t say I am in pain but it is a discomfort that I’ve not felt for a few weeks now. I’ve not done anything more strenuous that walking but the day I hurt it again, I had walked further than at any other time.
I’m also surprised that an NHS hospital would choose something based on the shouldice method – I was told that due to having such high levels if infection, a mesh repair was impossible. I have a mental image of the surgeon looking at Youtube videos to make sure he got it right 🙂
Take care and I wish you all a speedy recovery
Phil
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2 Replies
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Thank you so much for your reply – that’s really interesting – wasn’t aware of these types of repair but it does make sense given the circumstances. The thing is, non of the other doctors mentioned temporary, they were all like ‘6 weeks and you will be back to normal’, so I’m wondering if he mis-spoke or maybe presumed that a non-mesh repair wasn’t a ‘real’ repair – I will need to ask the surgeon if this is the case.
8 weeks on and I’m still in quite a bit of discomfort when i walk – it seemed to be fine after 6 weeks, was walking pretty normally. I’ve started wearing a jock strap and this feels like it may be helping, so I’m not sure why I regressed – is this normal?
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Sounds like you had the best repairs possible based on the circumstances.
If they truly did a Shouldice repair, then that’s great and it doesn’t make sense that they said you had a temporary repair. Sometimes surgeons do a tissue repair and I correctly call it a Shouldice. Those pseudo-Shouldice repairs are not well studied and it’s unclear how many of them fail.
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