billymueller

Well, I was just notified of this latest post and I realized I had not updated you all.

So here’s what happened ….

I had the double hernia laparoscopic surgery on July 8th. Everything went just great. I’m VERY happy I had it done. And just like the doctor said, I am now doing everything I was doing before, and all the original strength and flexibility is there. No pain, no problems. And no more hernia.

It DID take a good 3-4 weeks before I was able to resume full activities and icing my groin as much as possible for 2-3 weeks was inconvenient. But well worth it because it’s my understanding that if you don’t ice it as much as possible in those first few weeks and if you don’t wear bikini brief underwear your recovery can take much longer.

The supposed dangers of mesh are nonsense, if you ask me. Had a long conversation with my doctor about that. It’s really safe. This is routine, effective surgery IF you have a GOOD SURGEON. Do your homework and make sure you get a great surgeon.

Of course, if you go online you will find horror stories if you search hard enough. A few hundred people every year of taking Tylenol, too.

The bigger danger is not the mesh, it’s having to do the surgery over again if you don’t have a good doctor.

Can you repair the hernia without surgery? My opinion is no. A hernia is literally a tear; imagine a wet paper bag with a tear in it. You can’t really repair that without surgery. Sure, you may be able to hold off the surgery by keeping it at bay, but literally repairing it to full strength? I’m very skeptical about that.

It’s sort of like a cavity in your tooth. It won’t go away by itself and it will gradually get worse over time.

Best of luck and keep us posted. I’m not saying I have all the answers … I am only sharing my experience here.

By the way, I DO think I could have waited another year or so before having the surgery because my hernia was that minor. But I don’t see how I could have avoided having it surgically repaired.

Hey John,

Thanks for the reply! I’m amazed how similar your symptoms are to mine — what I mean by that is that my hernia appears to be as minor as yours.

I’m very encouraged by the fact that you’ve been able to resume hot yoga. Last time I did hot yoga, it aggravated my hernia somewhat (made it bulge and a little sore), so I decided to back off and just rest it. That was nearly two weeks ago, and my groin area currently has no bulge, but it is a little squishy to the touch sometimes.

It feels like just resting it has healed it somewhat. However, until I’m proven wrong, I do not believe that simply leaving it alone, or doing certain strengthening exercise, will fully heal it. Would love to be wrong on that, of course. Even though it feels fine right now, I can still FEEL it in there a little bit. I don’t think that’s going away. My doctor put it like this: It’s like a tooth cavity … it’s not going to go away and it will only get worse over time.

However, I find your experience very interesting because yours appears to be getting better. Which is very encouraging.

The other thing he told me was this: “Your hernia is at a very early stage, and if you were, say, an accountant sitting in a chair all day long and you never exercised, then I would tell you that you could wait one to two years before getting it fixed. But since you’re playing all sorts of sports, you should get it fixed.”

As for the surgery itself, yes, I do believe it’s completely routine. Not sure I would use the word “trivial,” but yeah, that’s how I’m looking at it. As Bill Walton once said, “Minor” surgery is when they’re doing it on someone else!”

The doc said the procedure takes 35 minutes and I will be able to resume ALL activities I was doing before the surgery after waiting 3-4 weeks to heal. He said it will absolutely be the same and, in fact, the groin area will actually be STRONGER because that mesh will be in there. (Your skin grows into the mesh over time and it becomes part of you.) I forgot to ask him about this, but my suspicion is that the only downside is that perhaps the groin will be less flexible, but I really don’t know for sure. He said the recurrence rate is less than 1%.

Like I said, I’ve jogged a couple times and jumped rope twice. No side effects to those activities, so tomorrow I think I will go to my hot yoga class and see how it goes. (I go to a yoga place here in San Diego called CorePowerYoga, and they do a hot class that’s almost identical to Bikram.)

Anyway, I will keep you posted. Congrats on your situation, as it appears to be getting better. I wouldn’t get down on yourself for being “lazy” (as you put it), or for delaying surgery. Sounds to me like you’re just doing what you can. I really don’t think there is any downside to delaying surgery UNLESS your symptoms were getting worse, which they’re not in your case. The only real danger with a hernia is strangulation, in which the bulge gets so huge that the protruding intestine can get strangulated and blood flow is cut off to the organs and then you’re in an immediate emergency type situation. But you’re obviously nowhere near that and you’re being cautious, which is good.

I think your theory that it may have been caused by the trumpet playing is very possible. That makes sense to me, based on what I have learned about hernias and their causes. But there’s really no way to know for sure.

Anyway, thanks again for the post and I will keep you apprised of my progress. An interesting side note to my own situation is that I would have already gotten the surgery if it wasn’t for the fact that I happen to be in the middle of switching health insurance plans and I CAN’T do the surgery now, unless I want to pay $3,400 out of pocket. If I wait till my new plan kicks in (in a month or two), then it will only cost me $250.

So that’s why I’m waiting and trying to figure out what I can do physically and what I can’t do. I certainly don’t want to make it worse while I wait for surgery, but sitting on my butt doing nothing is not an option! I don’t feel like myself unless I can do exercise of some kind, so I’m going to continue to see what I can do safely.

I would actually consider never getting the surgery, but I do not want to give up playing tennis and basketball, and those activities I’m sure would aggravate the hernia. Plus, I do not want to spend the rest of my life never being able to lift a heavy object, do some weight lifting, and tip-toeing around the groin sensitivity. But we shall see.