[TheWayBackUp]

Surgery #1 2008: Emergency Cecal Volvulus Bowel Obstruction where they ended up removing my cecum and ascending colon. It was emergency, and it got infected but left only a thin 3 inch horizontal scar next to my belly button.

After about 4-6 months I was back to vigorous exercise and basically felt almost as good as new just rehabbing myself. However I’m a personal trainer and pretty knowledgeable about health and exercise. I started with exercising seated in machines etc. to keep the core out of it, then gradually added back easy core exercises that were pain free and eventually got back to just about 100% strength of what I had before.

Surgery #2 2009: Emergency Small Bowel Obstruction where they removed a blockage and a couple of inches of my small intestine. This one got badly infected and I was left with about a 6 inch vertical scar up my midline from 4 inches below belly button to 2 inches above. But it had to be opened and it took almost 6 weeks to heal and was a big wide scar kind of looking like a small cucumber in shape/size.

Again after 4-6 months I started getting back to feeling myself strength wise, however this time I wore an abdominal binder for about 3 years especially during vigorous sports. I ended up getting as strong as ever in my core over the years especially once I no longer felt that the binder helped support (I no longer felt better with the brace by this time, although I seem to have figured out how to recruit other muscles rather than use the weakened area for a lot of things). I had been told right after surgery #2 that I would need a repair type surgery, and that person at the time seemed to think it would be a pigskin type, but that I would have to wait 2 years to be healed enough to get it. Well, at the 2 year mark I felt very good and the surgeon I saw didn’t want to do a surgery if I felt good.

I haven’t had bowel issues at all since 2012, at that time I had a bowel obstruction where I was hospitalized but never needed surgery.

I saw two hernia specialists and one plastics in the Boston area. I am in the Northeast US. All presented the same recommendation of total abdominal wall reconstruction with mesh, and said it was not something that would be an emergency need in regards to another bowel obstruction as a result of this hernia.

Early 2018 I was doing a situp and felt intense pain rip across the scar area. There was no warning sign. It’s been sore ever since. The pain has given way to more of a chronic ache/weak feeling as my conditioning has really slipped away as I’ve been babying it.

I have not heard of robotic surgery – thanks for mentioning that! I’ll look into it.