[PeterC]

I cannot take these studies seriously. There’s a guy on here that had a bilateral triple neurectomy and his life was literally ruined. That 1 person should be where the practice ends. Its like they are desperately trying to find something that will match their own bias to justify cutting people’s nerves.

Cutting nerves is not treatment its a band-aid solution and a lazy one. The nerves are signaling pain because something isn’t right and is flaring them up. The real effort should be going into finding the cause of the nerve flaring up, not removing the signal (nerve) that something is wrong. I’m not saying its easy but that’s where the efforts should be. I use the car analogy all the time but its the same thing. If your “check engine” light goes up on your car you don’t remove the check engine light and then keep driving. You do a deep analysis of why the check engine light is on until you find the issue.

[PeterC]

Do not go to Muschawek or get the Muschawek repair. Her procedure sounds wonderful on paper but it makes absolutely no sense. She cuts a nerve as part of her procedure for absolutely no valid reason – you will have permanent issues from someone cutting your nerve. She also creates a flap out of the internal oblique if I am not mistaken – again this is a terrible idea you will have permanent core issues and weakness from this alone. She claims to do surgery on all these football players yet all her “regular people” patients have issues and she eventually just ignores them and claims everything went right.

[PeterC]

I can’t answer your question but I can tell you removal of the ilioinguinal nerve has a direct impact on permanently impairing the cremasteric reflex/cremaster muscle function even though half the doctors like to pretend it has no motor function to justify cutting it out of people left and right. It’s both in the literature (which they choose to ignore) and I personally experience it on a daily.

[PeterC]

I tried to edit to add to my reply to good intentions above this but what I’m trying to say is – there is a severe lack of guidelines – of methodology. Yes its not all black & white its a hard area to diagnose. But there are things that clearly are dangerous & damaging for patients that are still being done out of pure lazyness and/or lack of willingness from doctors to actually thoroughly diagnose patients with issues properly. They want to move through patients as quickly as possible rather than rule out every possible cause & try as much as possible to pinpoint the problem. And I agree with OP that in 2021 there shouldn’t be such a range in opinions & treatments for this. Something needs to change.

[PeterC]

You’re in for a ride honestly – half of these doctors don’t look at the images they just take the word of the non-specialized radiologist that does your initial scan/assessment (in my 4 years of dealing with groin injury). Who cares about double-checking and making sure they didn’t miss anything am I right?

Dealing with an injury has opened my eyes to how there is no law, no methodology, no nothing. Everyone is doing their own thing, the effort in treatment you get depends on if they can brag about you (as in your social status), and so on and there is little to no regard for your long-term well-being.

I agree with you its not normal that in 2021 so many ”specialized” doctors are doing their own thing and end up with the wrong or poor diagnosis and end up messing patients up with experimental hypothetical procedures that don’t even make sense and its because there are no repercussions, no body of regulation to watch & make sure that it doesn’t happen. There are no rules.

Be very careful and do your own research – nobody cares more about you than you not even the people paid thousands to care – they mostly don’t. You’re one terrible doctor/procedure away from being maimed & having to live with permanent dysfunction for the rest of your life and its totally avoidable. I know its frustrating & I’m rooting for you I hope you find someone decent who cares to help you. Little piece of advice – if any of them start suggesting early on that its a nerve issue – run and never go back. Don’t ever let a doctor do anything to your nerves – no matter the discomfort or pain. Its the lazy physician’s solution to everything because its so much easier to cut a nerve & undersell the permanent consequences of it than it is to actually troubleshoot what is dysfunctional and how to fix it with as little damage to your anatomy as possible.

Be very careful

[PeterC]

I’ve been reading about Dr. Yunis and he seems amazing and I genuinely regret not hearing about him before. Granted at no point did I have an actual hernia so his name didn’t come up because I wasn’t looking for hernia surgeons at the time.

See the one thing this forum and Dr. Brown did right – and my acupuncturist in L.A warned me about this – is they managed to be the first results that come up when you start researching a little online. Their marketing investment is great.

Dr. Brown bought out and is exploiting the domain sportshernia.com portraying himself as someone who has been getting athletes back on the field for 30 years. Yet I cannot for the life of me find a single athlete let alone a professional athlete that got his surgery and went back and recovered.

I have read the post from the wife on the runner’s blog and I had genuinely hoped that she was not an athlete and that her complications were from just not being as conditioned from the get go and what not. And now I find myself in her shoes.

And I don’t know how to cope. Any job I’ve ever held in my life I’ve held with such integrity and accountability. I don’t understand how these doctors are just allowed to continue doing what they do after destroying a life.

I’m going to be honest, I don’t know if I have it in me to keep going. The weekend before Dr. Brown’s surgery I was supposed to perform at the Grammys and I turned it down to get what was supposed and easy and clear surgery so that I can actually get back to 100%. I really was reaching the peak of my career, signed to the biggest agency in LA that sponsored my U.S Work Visa and what not. And It took Dr. Brown 1.5 hours to absolutely shred me. It’s too much to handle to be honest.

It’s 100% my fault. Reading through his procedure now – not a single step makes sense. The reconfiguration that he calls ”reinforcement”. All the unnecessary extra cutting. None of it makes sense to anyone who studies the body and the muscles. I was at a point where I told myself I needed to just trust that he knows what he’s doing and that he would only do the strict minimum – that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. And that he wouldn’t look in the eyes of both my parents and lie to them.

Boy was I wrong…..

Anyways I appreciate you. Best of luck with everything.

[PeterC]

@thunderrose

Hey thanks for even replying. First of all – I am just now finding out that he used silk suture when THE ENTIRE POINT of me going to him was because he said he only use absorbable material and doesn’t think the body should have foreign objects in them. I still don’t think the sutures is the problem but its just another thing that’s really shade from him.

We literally discussed this before his surgery and I asked – is there going to be something left in me or is it absorbable and he said no everything will eventually dissolve but from the OP report it is silk sutures and from the internet silk sutures don’t dissolve.

So great – one more lie from him. I genuinely do not understand how this man sleeps at night. He absolutely butchered me for nothing. I did not gain a single benefit from his surgery and he destroyed my groin for no reason.

Honestly everything you just wrote makes sense…I’m just completely speechless that someone would do this to me, while meeting my parents who flew out to meet him in person beforehand and knowing that I was at the peak of my career. He assured me that I was a perfect candidate and that I would be back within 3 months. I’m 10 months in and I can’t tolerate more than a 30 minutes walk and I’m uncomfortable the entire time.

He literally ruined my life and I genuinely don’t know thats its possible to have a normal life after what he did to me. I went from pain but able to do things to MORE pain and completely dysfunctional.

I think I’m ready to give up to be honest. Zoland says he could undo the surgery without any issues but I don’t see how. You know the craziest thing is I know for a fact Dr. Brown reads my posts on here and doesn’t in the slightest feel anything in regard to how he destroyed me and hes doing it to other patients, I’m in contact with a bunch of patients that were his after me and he’s still doing these repairs and not a single one of them recovers they all feel like crap. And Dr. Towfigh still endorses him like this is okay. In what universe is this normal? I cannot find a single athlete who has recovered from Dr. Brown’s Sports Hernia surgery.

I genuinely feel like I’m in a horror movie.

Thanks for the reply you’re awesome for even replying. I haven’t talked to Meyers yet because Covid is out of control and I don’t feel comfortable flying to meet him right now but I will eventually.

I’m glad you’re doing well. Wish you all the best.

[PeterC]

@ajm222 check out Dr. Jonathan Yunis if you haven’t, he seriously has triple the combined positive reviews of all the doctors mentioned on here – I can’t find a single person who has a bad thing to say about him and does telemedicine consults for literally 1/5th of the price.

[PeterC]

I feel you. The #1 reason some of us end up getting surgery is because we can’t take the back and forth anymore it really messes with your head and we tell ourselves ”if its going to be like this and never completely resolve on its own might as well get it fixed”.

But how many people can you find that were actually fixed after? When I finally said I’d get surgery done, I was told my left side (that had no previous surgery) would recover in 6 weeks and my right side that had a superficial mesh removed would be fine in 3 months. I read your post and I feel for you because I felt the exact same way so many times and now 10 months since surgery I can’t take a walk comfortably and I’m on the verge of ending my life because of how I feel since Dr. Brown’s surgery where ”I was the perfect candidate” and not a single person cares. Not a single person. It’s business as usual for them.

Its not meant to scare you but just know that its always a possibility that you walk out of a surgery and feel worse and seriously impaired. Just be careful with your choice of surgeon and make sure that once you make that decision you make it for yourself, not out of desperation.

Wish you all the best I really do.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by  PeterC.

[PeterC]

@rob-t-uk I think thats exactly how I would handle it if I were in your shoes. Very sound thinking. Its a red flag when a surgeon wants to schedule you for surgery the next day without having even had a look at a single scan or yourself in person.

Marsh & LLoyd consults sound like a great idea for now. Hopefully they give you some answers.

Always happy to help – good luck with everything!

[PeterC]

@cerebralsuccour What Dr. Brown did to me can indeed be interpreted as a hernia surgery its the same area and similar technique despite having no bulge or hernia. One might even argue that what he did would’ve been better suited to treat a really unathletic older person with a big hernia not an athlete. The reason I don’t know what doctor to go to is because he bilaterally destroyed my inguinal canal by opening the external oblique aponeurosis through the entirety of the length of the canal, then cut laterally to create flaps which means he effectively destroyed the structural integrity of my abdominal wall and released the external oblique aponeurosis from its lateral attachment (the inguinal ligament) completely.

The dramatic weakness I have is because of this. From a structural point of view its the equivalent of someone cutting my achille’s tendon in half and then trying to attach the upper piece (still attached to my calf muscle) onto my heel and the part that originates from the heel under that. It would cause catastrophic structural weakness to my leg and I probably would not be able to walk anymore as its origin would no longer be connected to the rest of the tissue and by extension the calf muscle.

So what I need is someone to undo what he did and quite literally put my external oblique aponeurosis back in 1 piece which is actual reconstruction of the abdominal wall. But I am afraid the damage and the weakness has been done and I’m looking for a miracle that doesn’t exist which is why none of these doctors know what how to do it and why I’m asking if perhaps I am now in the realm of needing a plastic surgeon or something similar. Its damage beyond anything any of them have ever seen. Its stupid beyond words and was completely unnecessary.

I’ll check out all the doctors you mentioned but quite frankly I have given up of ever feeling normal or healthy again a long time ago. I appreciate your time and the suggestions and If I ever get anywhere I’ll be sure to drop you an update.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 4 months ago by  PeterC.

[PeterC]

Hey @cerebralsuccour thank you for the suggestions. I have not contacted Shouldice being that I never had a traditional hernia in the first place rather I had tearing in the abdominal tissues from overuse from being a dancer. From my experience so far all the surgeons that specialize in traditional hernias rather than dealing with athletes/sports hernias get very very uncomfortable when presented with my case because they are used to dealing with regular people who just get a traditional hernia and never had surgery before. Anything more complex or different they get stuck – at least in my experience. I will look those names you gave me and try to reach out as well. I appreciate your concern and you taking the time with the suggestions.

[PeterC]

Hey @sensei305 will do thank you for the suggestion

[PeterC]

Hey Good Intentions, I appreciate the reply and suggestion. I will look him up

[PeterC]

Hi Dr. Towfigh,

I have not been offered a plan of care by anyone. Dr. Zoland just said he doesn’t even see what Dr. Brown did wrong and stopped there. Dr. Yunis said what happened to me is an abomination but also did not know how to help me and did not offer a plan of care.

Dr. Meyers did not exactly provide a plan of care he just wants to do his surgery where he detaches the rectus and reattaches it and cuts into the adductor tendons – which he does to every patient. He is not addressing the serious issues I have since Dr. Brown’s surgery and the last patient that went from Dr. Brown’s surgery to Meyers is now on disability.

Finally Dr. Krpata did not offer a plan of care. He just said “I can do exploratory surgery and you’ll lose a testicle”. This is not exactly a plan of care and I’m not very keen on losing a testicle nor being cut into with no plan when I had no testicle issues at any point throughout my journey.

So unless I’m missing something there is no plan of care here. I wish Dr. Yunis knew what to do because he was by far the only doctor who seemed to genuinely care about my well-being.

There was another Doctor in the U.S who operated on an olympic athlete for a sports hernia and the person had said great things about him I just cannot seem to remember his name so I’ll try to find him.

Nevertheless I appreciate your reply Dr. Towfigh and I’ll keep on trying to find help as long as I can.

[PeterC]

Hey Mark,

Dr. Brown sadly did not have a plan at all. He answered all my questions with what I wanted to hear then proceeded to do the exact opposite. He went against every single thing he said to me and my parents knowing that my entire career was riding on this and that I begged him to do the strict minimum and to approach it with tissue integrity preservation in mind.

Your proposition makes a lot of sense and I wish it was that simple. But from my experience – a lot of the doctors I met did not want to approach this objectively, take on the challenge and come up with a solution to help me. For some reason they almost all stop at ”where does it hurt” and then use a linear approach to how they would stop the pain from where I am right now.

That’s not what I need. Dr. Brown caused catastrophic structural damage to my core muscles and all the tissues are failing. As a professional dancer I spent my entire adult life studying the human body and the tensions in the body/the way muscles and tissues work with one another. Something critical was cut into and detached for me to go from being ripped with incredible core tension where my acupuncturist was struggling to insert needles during treatment from how conditioned my tissues were to suddenly my entire core from top to bottom to be sagging, unable to flex my rectus or obliques at all with more issues than I can list here. I cannot function on a day to day at all. I can stand for about 1 hour and walk for about 30 minutes thats the most physical activity I can do.

I believe the only solution would to reconstruct the entire groin area tissue by tissue but I’m almost sure thats not possible and/or I have no idea who would even be qualified to do it. And I’m not even sure it would help because the damage has been done and the original tension has been permanently released I’m not sure how much of it could be reconditioned even if my core was whole again.

I can tell you one of the doctors (not Meyers nor Yunis) that has been interviewed on this very website over a year ago had no idea what he was looking at and had the audacity to tell me ”I don’t see what he did wrong he went in the direction of the fascia”. This shocked me because this very doctor has a practice focused on being ”core specialists”.

Then you have Dr. Yunis who said what was done to me is nuts and seemed shocked on both occasions I consulted with him but also did not proactively advance a plan or anything to help me. I suspect its because he knows the damage caused by Dr. Brown is too extensive. He is the only one that did say ”I’ll try to help you the best I can” when I originally talked to him and seemed genuinely concerned but also his eyes were very much saying ”its doomed”.

All that to say I am lost and terrified and I dream of getting a bunch of doctors to help me out but I don’t know if they exist. I will go to Cleveland to see the doctor recommended to me by Mike M and go from there. I very much dread it because I’m at the point where I am embarrassed to show myself to a new doctor. I have nothing to be embarrassed about but every time a new doctor sees me and sees my before/after pictures and reads the operative report they all gasp, they all give me the look of ”man im so sorry” and it breaks me inside even more.

I appreciate your reply and your empathy towards me I really do.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by  PeterC.

[PeterC]

Hey @mikem

Thank you for the reply. I have recently seen Dr. Yunis and in his own words he said that what Dr. Brown did to me is ”f*cking nuts”. I do not think he fully grasped how impaired I am in my every day life and movement and I am not sure he was comfortable with surgically doing anything to me. I think he was more traumatized than I am looking at what Dr. Brown did.

I have also consulted with Dr. Meyers in Philadelphia but he seemed to say ”its nothing” and was very eager to get me into surgery which scared me to be frank. He seems to want to do a whole lot more cutting and at this point I am scared to death of doctors and surgeries so I am taking my time.

I will have a look at the surgeons you suggested and potentially go see them.

I realize that I’m probably never going to see any sort of quality of life back and am still traumatized by how much Dr. Brown was pushed as a ”great doctor” on this very forum so I am proceeding with extreme caution and skepticism but after 29 months without any progress I have to try something.

Thank you for taking the time to reply I really appreciate it.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by  PeterC.

[PeterC]

@pinto I didn’t have a hernia at any point I had some overuse tearing in my groin as a professional dancer – and the one big surgery I got bilaterally was through Dr. Brown and his ”sports hernia repair”. The reason I’m so messed up is because he does his own made-up procedure which is a mix of shouldice & desarda (so a mix of 2 hernia procedures even though I had no hernia at any point just some tearing in the groin muscles) where he cuts into too much healthy tissues to patch you up like a pair of jeans and you simply can’t do that to tissues. He breaks the structural integrity of the muscles and causes permanent weakness by doing so. The worst part is he misdiagnosed me & I have athletic pubalgia (over-use tearing at the pubic bone attachment) so I still have most of the pain & symptoms I had before his procedure but I have SEVERE weaknesses across my body. My left side had a 1 inch external oblique tear which is supposed to be a simple repair where you sow the tear in the external oblique to help it heal (since it has poor blood flow) – a classic overuse injury. I woke up to a full shouldice/desarda repair, 3 new attachments into my inguinal ligament, cut out flaps of my external oblique etc.

I’ve had a 6 pack my whole life & very healthy core tissues/activation and I haven’t been able to flex my core properly since his procedure 16 months ago. I knew something was very wrong when I realized that my entire core/abs had completely released (went completely loose) after the surgery. They’re not supposed to do that. When you get any abdominal surgery, the rest of the core will actually tighten up around the scar to stabilize/compensate for the weakness around the wound. But after his procedure my entire core from pubic bone to ribs were released & the strength was entirely gone across the whole thing and my lats were completely released as well (they stem from teh external oblique tissues) and haven’t worked since.

I think the saddest part is I had asked about all this before agreeing to the surgery. I asked is your procedure going to affect the rest of my core by being too invasive/will it impair the rest of my core/will it affect it and he said no. Sure enough it did. Additionally I’ve developped knee problems & hip problems since because all the strength/natural tension that normally help someone walk & hold the hips aligned is gone. The right side of my rectus abdominis completely collapsed too you can tell its completely loose.

I think what hurts me the most & is messing me up psychologically the most is – it took me 2 years to get the courage to trust a surgeon again when I went to him. And while I had chronic pain in my groin, I was still able to dance professionally, I went on daily walks in the park, etc. I only decided on surgery because I realized it wasnt healing and I thought I need to get it repaired I cant just push through pain for the rest of my life. Hell – even if he didnt completely fix all the issues I wouldve been okay knowing that there’s still hope. But he made me so much worse. he created so many problems. so many issues – there was such a disregard for my tissue health that I’m realizing that I have no hopes of ever recovering back to 100% – something I had before he operated on me. I don’t even think I can withstand another surgery. That’s whats been messing me up psychologically. I’m not interested in suing, or anything similar. What good is it going to bring me? I just wish these doctors would stop a second a realize that we’re real people they’re messing up. And I’m not alone – someone in my city who isn’t a professional athlete had the same sports hernia ”repair” with Dr Brown and hes on his 5th revision surgery from that surgery. There’s something extremely wrong here.

The goal should be to do the least amount of collateral damage as possible, but in his case he does the absolute most amount of damage possible or rather theres a complete disregard for tissue health. Since having his procedure I’ve been on exactly 8 walks (in 16 months) and every single time I came home from one I’ve thought about ending my life because I cannot accept how messed up I am and how uncomfortable and weak it feels. I can’t lay on my back because I’m uncomfortable breathing – his procedure affected my diaphragm and my breathing as well.

Anyways I could go on and on but you get the point. I have a doctor who says he can put the muscles back to where they are supposed to be/re-attach the things Dr Brown detached but they will stay dysfunctional because the damage has been done to them already. So yeah I don’t know. I haven’t had the courage to end it. I’m terrorized of doctors and I haven’t had the courage to continue seeking help. Most people can’t believe what they’re reading when theyre reading Dr. Brown’s operative report & physios cant help me because you cant rehab muscles that are mangled & attached in unnatural configurations. I went completely silent and stopped talking to all my friends/colleagues because I don’t know how to cope & don’t know how I can be around anyone like this. The few people I’ve talked to about it cannot believe how healthy of a human being I was and how miserable I look now & they just have pity in their eyes for me.

[PeterC]

Yes and no, in most cases the problem is indeed the mesh. But the response some of these surgeons have or their methods are a recipe for disaster. Nerves become their bread & butter to explain everything. But theres actually very few real cases where a nerve needs to be tended to. They think a nerve block is an appropriate diagnostic tool to tell if the nerve is the problem – which it isn’t. Pain signals are transmitted through nerves throughout our bodies. If the mesh is causing the pain, and a doctor injects a nerve-block – of course the patient will have relief. That doesn’t mean take the nerve out – thats like having a check engine light go up in your car & once you bring the car to the garage, instead of finding out whats causing the check engine light to be on and fixing it, they remove the check-engine light altogether from the car & give you the car back and expect it to be okay. Its not okay its just they removed the signal telling you that its not okay.

Similarly it doesn’t excuse that what a lot of these doctors are doing is just bad. I’m in a position where I’ve never had a hernia in my life but I’ve had a ”bilateral” sports hernia repair done by Dr. Brown and whats interesting is I have one side that never had a previous surgery only slight symptoms & one side with a previous non-traditional mesh that had no tissue grow on it but nevertheless, a side with previous surgery & foreign body so I can actually compare the outcome. And both sides are equally terrible, damaged, 10x more painful than before I went to Dr. Brown and I have more than 10 new permanent issues that I’ve never had a day in my life as a professional dancer. He literally ruined my life. And he wants to hide behind the fact that ”it must be because I had a mesh” which is just cowardly because I had no previous surgery on my left groin and theyre both equally destroyed/mangled since his procedure. Every doctor I’ve consulted since has looked at me with horror & pity in their eyes saying I’m so young yet I’ll have to live the rest of my life with permanent chronic pain & weaknesses as a direct result of his procedure.

Yet somehow – he is allowed to do this & continue to do this freely. 2021. No regulatory body. Because its such a niche thing. I had one very well known surgeon tell me that Dr. Brown is heavily talked about in medical academic circles but not for the right reasons & that I’m not the first person he’s seen that ended like this. But if you ask Dr Brown, my entire outcome and the 2 years I just spent barely being able to walk or function is because of a surface mesh that was under my skin & that came out as clean as they come.

So you see how the mesh thing became some doctor’s excuse for a lack of thoroughness & positive outcomes? Its so easy to blame the mesh rather than your shitty made up procedure that hurts every patient you touch.

[PeterC]

@herniahelper but do you not think that the reason there are not more people coming out to share their positive experiences is because there are almost no people with positive experiences? At what point does it click? Its the equivalent of crazy anti-vaxxers saying ”its funny how the virus only affects those that didn’t get vaccinated” – hello?

I agree with you that imaging is not as straight forward as it may seem and it explains why a doctor can sometimes miss something. But there’s also a very real, very tangible problem with doctors in this space altogether. I had 2 surgeons in two different countries that both work for an NHL team gravely misdiagnose me, perform incredibly harmful procedures on me that they undersold with made up success % & procedures. And the latest doctor I’ve consulted actually sees on my first scan (4 years ago) what my original injury was and how neither of the procedures I got were necessary and worst – I was told that I was effectively injured by doctor (as in a doctor permanently injured me).

How is this possible in 2021? We’re able to transplant a whole face. I have a friend who had a motorcycle crash & has around 15 scars on his body & everything works as it should, no issues. I know someone who gave an entire organ & is completely functional aside from having a scar, no disfiguration, no chronic pain, nothing.

Yet in this hernia/groin space – the web is full of horror stories from doctors who do these horrible, invasive procedures where they cut into you like play dough & then block your calls when you obviously become disabled afterwards.

If you brought your car in to the garage for a weird noise or perhaps wheels alignment and they gave you back your car and suddenly it barely stars, can’t shift gears, a window is broken, it stops every 100meters, and smoke is coming out of it (none of which was happening prior) – would that be acceptable? Then how come it is acceptable in this space? Is it really that hard to have a consensus on a basic set of rules of dos/donts to keep patients safe? so that at worst – you didnt fix their problem but at least you didnt make them worse?

Just some food for thought. If there are not ”more people coming out to share their good experiences” its because there are no people with good experiences. How do you know how to pick a restaurant – you see good reviews. People go out of their way when something or someone did something right and helped them – its not just people who had a bad experience that leave reviews in any other business/industry. Its no different here. If there were people with good experiences & they were common occurrence – we would know about it. we would hear about them. These doctors wouldnt need to try and lie & sell you their b.s to make a buck off liberally cutting into people – people would come to them and would feel safe that they’re getting the help they needed.