Good intentions
Forum Replies Created
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Thank you for that link to the Comment. It’s funny how you can find more if you look, I didn’t look hard enough.
But, the one reference that we would all like to see, #5, about chronic pain rates, is still behind a “sign up for free trial” wall, just a few lines down from the preview. Oh well. This internet world is a strange place. It might be worth a sign-up for Watchful or others.
“lower post-operative complications (including chronic pain) [5]”
In addition though, another useful item in the Comment article is the email addresses of both Dr. Netto and Dr. Szasz. Maybe somebody could invite them on to the forum, for their views. Or they might respond to a well-written query about chronic pain or other details of the Shouldice procedure.
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Dr. Netto and Dr. Szasz also had some comments about the Lorenz et al paper that was referenced in the missing Dr. Sea thread. It doesn’t look he has published anything since his Towfigh interview.
It is pay-per-view and a comment so there is no abstract.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10029-021-02455-z
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I found the video with Dr. Netto discussing chronic pain. I think that you have to listen to everything he says about it to understand what he means. He said that they did not know and guesses at “maybe 5″%”. He also talks about the type of pain, describing it as pain that does not require pain meds. Overall, he seems to be just saying that chronic pain from the Shouldice procedure deserves more study. He has an accent so you have to listen carefully, plus his microphone was cutting out.
It’s at about 19:00. I timestamped the Share so it should start there.
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Here are links to the sites you mentioned above.
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Thank you WB. I also appreciate Dr. Towfigh’s efforts in keeping the forum going. I’ve enjoyed the discussions and have learned a lot. But I think that the reality might be that this forum is not really high on Dr. Towfigh’s list of things that she enjoys. Her youtube channel seems to be much more fun, where she participates directly with a fellow surgeon.
If Mr. Sea’s post cannot be recovered then how can a person be confident that the whole site won’t be inaccessible someday? It’s just the reality of today’s internet that things never really disappear. We should be ready for that possibility.
One thing that might happen is that in order to resurrect Dr. Sea’s Topic, everything that has been written since then will have to be disappeared. So, more discussions lost. It’s a vicious cycle.
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It really is a shame that Dr. Sea’s Topic is gone. All of these details were discussed in that Topic. It makes you wonder what causes things to get lost and how much effort a person should put in to participating here. How can a whole multipage thread just disappear, without a trace? It’s like the Secret Service text messages. Very strange.
Anyway, didn’t you say that you had an indirect hernia? The Shouldice repair seems kind of invasive for a small indirect hernia. The point that Dr. Kang made in the missing thread.
Also a shame that a professional’s efforts would be disappeared. Most of us on the forum are just internet “experts”, surfing around the web, reading, trying to understand. Dr. Kang contributed his thoughts to Mr. Sea’s thread as a bona fide experienced professional. And they just disappeared. How can that happen?
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It was a very long Topic with many participants and many replies. The forum software should have recovery features if it was accidentally deleted.
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If you go to ajm22’s profile you can go back to his first posts and see the progression of his journey. He started where you are now. He talked to many many people and had several friends/acquaintances who had had mesh repairs. They told him that he might as well get it done, although some of them seemed not quite happy with the results, if I recall right. I got the impression of people resigned to their fate, suggesting that there was no better way available.
He had the mesh implantation, then some years later had it removed. You’ll have to read the old posts to get the full story. If they are still available.
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It’s human nature to want other people to come along with you when you take a risk. ajm22’s friends told him the same thing.
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If there are questions about certain posts I hope that she will just remove those and leave the rest. It would be ironic to have a session about gaslighting then remove a whole multipage thread about the best pure tissue repair. At least give a reason.
Hoping for the best…
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I feel normal as far as planning a day or week or month’s activity, but the surgery area is definitely not normal. It’s still stiff and thick but seems to be getting more flexible with time. I still have pre-hernia blue jeans that I hope to be able to wear again someday, but can’t now because the thick band of tissue creates pressure in the groins when it’s compressed by tighter pants.
Overall it feels like I just have a thick layer of stiff tissue that is slowly regaining flexibility. I don’t try to stretch it because I think that the thick previously damaged tissue would probably hold or deform in some unnatural way and I’d probably end up damaging weaker “normal” tissue. I assume that the collagen replacement that is the basis of products like Ovitex is occurring, except in my case it’s replacing my own damaged tissue. It’s a slow process.
So, I’m happy that things are getting better and not worse but I try not to move things along too fast. Just thankful to be out of the mess I was in at the time.
Good luck. Take it slow. Be thankful. What else can a person do?
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So it’s been 4 1/2 years since I had the two pieces of Bard Soft Mesh removed (December 2017). It feels like ten years have passed. Over the last few months I’ve realized that I have not spent much time at all thinking twice about what I could or should do to avoid ending up with a sore lower abdomen and groin area. My range of activities, both duration and exertion, has extended out to where I finally feel normal again, all of the time. I do what I want to do and only have slight soreness at the spot of the remaining mesh piece, over the original direct hernia.
This should give hope, I hope, for anyone who is wondering if they’ll ever feel healthy again after mesh removal. But the time spent on this whole travesty is incredible, from implantation to give supposedly almost perfect immediate return to full fitness, through the pain and the waiting, and finally the removal, to today, has been 7 1/2 years. And I am just one of many.
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Here is another of his recent endeavors. I read through the APCO pages and job listings and they never explicitly say what they do. They seem to be a management consulting firm.
https://apcoworldwide.com/people/bruce-ramshaw/
https://apcoworldwide.com/about/mission-values/
Many words, but they don’t say much. From APCO’s Mission page –
“Our Mission
In a rapidly evolving global context and a time of transformational change, APCO strives to add value to our clients’ enterprises and benefit society. We enable clients to achieve their objectives through insightful counsel, compelling narratives and creative solutions.”
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Dr. Ramshaw’s career arc gets more fascinating. It seems that he no longer practices surgery and has gone completely over to something that looks like consulting in the business field. He is even teaching in the UT Haslam College of Business now, not the Medical school. His internet presence has become very self-promotional. Just a few short years ago he was a very vocal presence in the hernia repair world, helping to control the mesh-usage narrative.
Incredible.
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Here is the thread about the meeting, with my usual cynical comments. I really do feel bad for today’s surgeons. They just need to resist the corporate efforts. Start at the Hippocratic Oath and think in the long-term. Each surgeon has a responsibility for the rest of each patient’s life. Not just the 30 minutes for the surgery and the three months it takes for the paperwork to get finished.
https://herniatalk.com/forums/topic/international-hernia-collaboration-costa-rica-4-5-4-6/
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You might review the contributing surgeons page. It seems dated.
Many forums have a separate section for people to upload articles to. This might be a useful way to collect links to articles or actual pdf files, rather than trying to find old posts with the links.
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I see that it might just be a recycled article from 2021. The url says 2021, the title says 2022. Oh well.
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Here is a Topic I started a few years ago with some “good” stories.
https://herniatalk.com/forums/topic/successful-good-mesh-stories/
Here is another one that somebody else started on the topic. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, even though many of us on the forum were writing advice posts “in our heads” before hernia repair, to help guide people in their decision making after doing our own research, there just are not many people offering advice on where to go to get a good mesh repair, after they have it done. Even if you find a good story, the details of what, exactly, was done will probably be difficult to find out. There are so many material and methods out there nobody really knows what works and what doesn’t. Sorry. Good luck.
https://herniatalk.com/forums/topic/multiple-hernias-repair-success-stories-please/
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Here is an older thread where Dr. Kang talked about the various tissue repairs. He mentions the Bassini and what he calls the “corrupted” Bassini method.
I’ve also included a link to the Gibbeum hospital page which has the table I think that they are talking about.
https://herniatalk.com/forums/topic/kang-repair-question/
http://gibbeum.com/whykr/Why-and-What-Kang-Repair.php