Herminius
Forum Replies Created
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I am also so sorry to hear this Peter. I agree, Dr. Conze was exceptional in my visit with him, how devastating to hear that he also won’t be able to help. You have certainly been forced to swallow in whole the pill most of us have only had to swallow in part (the bitter truth that we will never be the men we used to be). But please don’t give up hope Peter! Your worth extends beyond that- may you find more hope, and purpose, and peace than you ever had before.
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My original hernia repair was indeed by a general surgeon. I had pain on both sides but he only found a small indirect hernia on the left and he did what he knew: he threw in a 10×15 patch of mesh.
The mesh didn’t address my original pain (on both sides) and added a lot more pain in the location of the mesh.
After spending a year focused on solving this new, more urgent pain, I got a mesh removal with Dr. Krpata, then turned my attention to the original pain. That pain, unlike the pain from the mesh, didn’t turn my world upside down every day, but it was very bothersome and prevented me from resuming my previously normal athletic activities.
I turned to Dr. Muschaweck because supposedly she is the best in the world at addressing the type of problem I was experiencing. Even if I didn’t live in Germany I would have flown here and paid for treatment with her, luckily I am blessed to be in a position to do that, but even if it were extremely difficult for me financially, this was my last hope and I would only have ever gone to her, based on her reputation.
Dr. Muschaweck is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea: she is very short tempered and no-nonsense, and doesn’t take time to make sure you are comfortable with everything (my wife loved her). She told me that my mesh cannot be removed (until she understood after a while that it had already been, which I guess means she would not remove the mesh). She claimed that I have a defect (described to me as both a hole and a bulge) on either side that she could fix (close) with her “minimal repair technique, and that while doing so she would look at the genital branch of the genital femoral nerve, and cut a small portion of it out if it looked damaged. (She says it is obvious when a nerve is damaged, and that not removing it guarantees chronic pain). Surgery is done under local anesthesia, and she says full recovery takes 14 days (as in a patient could be back to playing their sport professionaly). She recommends getting up and walking vigorously the day of surgery!
The surgery went as she expected- she removed a section of nerve on each side and performed her “Muschaweck” repair. I did wake up near the end of surgery which was not pleasant. Also, it has been two days since surgery and I can only hobble very slowly to the bathroom. I am in a lot of pain, so I can’t tell if anything has been helped yet. But I’ll respond again in two plus weeks. This was my last hope so hopefullly it worked! -
Hi Lucas, I’m 32, and had the mesh in for about ten months. Some of the risks Dr. Krpata mentioned were loss of a testicle, damage to blood vessels requiring a bigger emergency surgery, damage to the nerves in the area, hernia recurrence, and just the risk the surgery wouldn’t help and may even make the pain worse. I would recommend scheduling an appointment with him, specifically with him at the Chronic Groin Pain Clinic. Look it up- people come from all over for those appointments and you get a couple hours and everything done same day like imaging etc.
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Hi Lucas,
I had inguinal mesh removal by Dr. Krpata almost 5 weeks ago. I had pain similar to what you described. I was very worried about getting the mesh out, but am very happy that I did, I am still recovering, but I feel like I have a future now and have a chance to live a healthier life with less pain. You can look up my previous posts for more details.
Best of luck -
From the Surgical Report:
“No evidence of hernia recurrence. The lateral portion of the mesh was folded from the inferior up towards the middle space of Retzius.. used cautery to take it away from muscle… gonadal vessels, which were completely freed from the mesh and preserved… dissected the mesh off from both medial and lateral sides coming on the inferior epigastric vessels. We were able to take the mesh safely away from them, but we did have to clip the inferior epigastric artery both proximally and distally. The vas deferens was also preserved and the mesh was dissected away from the iliac artery and iliac vein, and then finally taken off from the pubis as well as Cooper’s. Once this dissection was complete, the mesh was removed in its entirety. -
Ah, ok thanks for the answer about the pathology report!
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Thanks for the encouragement William B. and GI. Getting ready to go home. Dr. Krpata was able to get all the mesh out without damaging any major blood vessels or nerves. He said there was nothing obviously wrong with the mesh aside from some curling up on the bottom side. I can tell you that the implantation hurt 10x worse than the explantation. Thanks for the advice GI, I’ll try to keep track of things to see what helps and hinders in the healing process. Did you ever get back to playing soccer or is that off the table for you now?
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Here’s a brief summary of the journey I’ve been through that I will post here and include in follow up reports on how mesh removal is going. I hope to give some insight to others who are suffering with chronic pain after being implanted with hernia mesh.
In April 2022 I began feeling a lot of discomfort in my left inguinal area after playing soccer. Ultrasound could make no diagnosis of a hernia, but a CT scan did identify a small hernia on the left side. I was scheduled for surgery in September, while waiting I developed the same aching pain in my right inguinal region. The pain on both sides was only ever felt when playing sports or using explosive movements, which leads me to believe that I was really just suffering from a sports injury.
The surgeon implanted a 10 x 15 Progrip mesh, in the first 2-3 days after surgery I was in the grip of extremely high levels of pain, slowly improving till about the 3 week mark when I picked up my daughter and felt like I had torn something/done something to mess the area up.
Since then I’ve had consistent pain throughtout each day. I’ve taken drugs including Gapabentin, which helped some but not enough. I’ve had ultrasound guided anesthetic injections, which also helped some but not much. I’ve tried rest, I’ve tried exercise. The type of pain and discomfort ran the gamut- electric pains, aching pains, foreign body sensation, shooting pains, writhing, gripping pains, throbbing pain.
I quickly came to the conclusion that I wanted to remove the mesh, so I flew to Ohio to see Dr. Krpata. I picked him because 1. He has had a lot of experience removing mesh. 2. He takes my insurance. 3. I have family nearby.
My consultation with him was in January at which point we scheduled an explantation, which ended up being delayed until late July as I wanted to give things a little more time to develop and was terrified of the possible negative consequences of mesh explantation which I had heard about.
In the months of waiting for the surgery I was in a constant agony about what to do: do I cancel the surgery or go ahead with it? I would have stretches during my day with very little pain or discomfort, distracted by whatever I was doing in which I would think: “no way should I risk explantation, after all, look at all the things I am capable of (I could go for short jogs, do light calisthenics, and do everything necessary to care for my family).Then the pain would come back as I went for a run, or laid down in bed, or sat reading a book and I would think “I have to get this out!” Eventually I settled this tug of war by choosing what I felt was the more hopeful and optimistic outlook: that my quality of life could improve with explantation, instead of being stuck in cycles of pain and low grade disability for the rest of my life. I felt like I had an enemy inside of me, and I didn’t want to live the rest of my life battling it. -
Thank you so much for your helpful and detailed answers. I will definitely take what you all said into account.