Guys -- had hernia surgery recently?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Mr S had a hernia repaired in 1974, when he was 18. He didn’t even know he had it – it was discovered during a pre-employment physical (and he had to get it fixed on his own dime before he could start the job. Nice). He says the aftermath of the surgery was worse than having the hernia (granted, he hadn’t known he had it, but still).

Fast forward 32 years, to last summer. He gets another physical (this one paid for, thank you expensive health insurance). Doc says the hernia is back and he’ll probably have to get it fixed again eventually.

Yesterday he finally saw the surgeon who will do the deed. Guess what he found? TWO hernias! A small one on the other side as well. Surgery date is February 6.

Some other guys he works with have had hernias fixed, and some had it done laparoscopically-- so less shaving (he says it was mighty weird having half of his junk shaved clean) and quicker recovery. We don’t know yet if that’s the type of surgery he’ll get. It sounds like he should be out of work for a few weeks, and then on light duty for a while.

So, tell us your stories if you’ve had this done in the last, oh, say ten years. How long was the surgery? How was your recovery? Lots of pain, or not much? What kinds of drugs (if any) did they give you afterward? (We have tickets for a wine-tasting dinner five days postsurgery that we’d rather not miss; Mr S can probably just get coffee if his meds and alcohol don’t mix. But he seems to recall just getting some flavor of Tylenol for pain, and no restrictions on diet or drinking.) How was your mobility afterward?

Thanks much for telling your fascinating tale. :slight_smile:

2

I had a double hernia repaired about 8 years ago. I did one side first & then the second a year later. The first time was worse, not sure why, I was black & blue throughout the genital area & I didn’t have a geat reaction to the anesthesia. I was out of work for a week. I just had an office job which made it easier to get back to work.

Both times they used a plastic (?) mesh I believe to repair the holes. The first couple days were pretty rough both times. the first time I had really bad constipation which I was told was caused by the anesthesia. Luckily they had given me some laxitives to take just in case.

I took percosets & alcohol was a no-no. I think after 5 days I was up Ok but he probably will not be able to stand for a long period of time. I read about 3 books recovering from each procedure which helped pass the days away lying on the couch.

Good Luck & I would be happy to answer any other questions. It has been awhile & more will come back to me. By the way I was about 32 -33 years old at the time.

3

I have a huge man-made hernia. My stomach was operated on in 2005 and the doc did not close the muscles. Without support it is as big as a cantalope. I have an operation scheduled in March to close it. You can actually see my intestines move and stuff under the skin.

Of course, none of that answers your questions…

4

My hernia was many years ago. At that time I was out of work for 6 weeks. No lifting no nothing. Engineering does not require much lifting . The technology has gotten much bettter since then. It was in the early 70s.

5

Right. In the mid 90’s the Doctor told me 2 weeks off from work or 4 weeks if I had both sides done together. I really could not miss 2 weeks so I had my procedure done on a Friday & took the next week off & went back to work the next Monday. I had to take it easy luckily it was mostly accounting/computer work.

6

I had double Lap. surgery about 3 years ago. DEFINITELY go Laproscopic (sp?) if you can. Recovery time is MUCH quicker. Also, find a surgeon who has done A LOT of Lap. hernia surgery. My surgeon had done almost 4000 of them. Don’t go to anyone who hasn’t done at least 100 Lap. hernia surgeries.

My surgery took about 45 minutes to 1 hour and was done as out patient surgery: in at 7:00 am, out by noon, in my case. The types of anasthesia they have right now are much better than 10 - 15 years ago. Tell your anesthesiologist you are sensitive to anasthesia, and only use the minimum needed. This can minimize nausea and other post-surgery malaise. (I’ve found that recovering from bad anasthesia is worse than recovering from the surgery itself.)

I don’t like pain medicine and don’t take anything stronger than advil if I don’t have to. With this surgery, I didn’t have to. I was pretty sore the first day, but that went away quickly. It wasn’t really pain. It was just the feeling of, oh, I want to be VERY careful when I move…

Also, well, er, … the boys are going to be pretty purple for about a week.

My surgeon said that he had patients just take one day off after the surgery then back to work (in non-physical jobs). I ended up taking 6 days off, just because I’m a wus and I had the vacation time. After the 1st day, I was up and around and could drive if I had to. The 2nd day I went to a movie. :slight_smile:

I don’t remember what pain drugs the doctor gave me. I think maybe Vicodin, but my advice: don’t take them unless you REALLY feel you need them. Any drug has side effects, and, with me, seem to hurt more than help.

J.

7

Khadaji: Ewwwww. And cool!

Mr. S works as a school custodian, so is on his feet for 8 hours a day. Plus he does a lot of physical stuff around home: cutting firewood, doing laundry, remodeling work, etc. So we definitely don’t plan for him to be back at work right away. He has 200 hours (five 40-hour weeks) of sick time saved up; hopefully he can be back to work on light duty before then.

Re drugs and alcohol: Over Christmas break he threw his back out big time. The doc gave him Vicodin and Percocet. He was in pretty bad pain and was grateful for the meds, but they did mess with his head. He was pretty spacey (absent-minded, didn’t remember most of our visit to my sister’s new house) and a bit unsteady on his feet while he was on them. But they did help the pain quite a bit and helped him get some rest.

Re pain tolerance: Except for the recent back brouhaha, Mr. S is pretty used to pain. Getting older, achy joints, arthritis, etc. (he’s 51 and has mostly had physical jobs his whole life). Usually he’s happy with aspirin, and I think he’ll take the minimum he needs.

Re time off from work: We’ll see how it goes. Hopefully only two or three weeks. I suspect he might milk the sick time a bit if his recovery goes well, and chalk the extra up to mental health time off from a really depressing job.

Re doctor experience: I looked him up. He’s got 11 years under his belt as a general surgeon. I’d have to get Mr. S to ask for more detail, and I’m sure he wouldn’t. Not sure how picky our insurance would let us be.

Preparation: Stock up on firewood and get caught up on laundry. Buy easy-prep food, at least for the first week or so. I work at home, but my schedule is going to be hellacious as usual while he’s home, so it’ll be a crunch on me to do much of the extra housekeeping that he usually does. We’ll sleep on the futon couches in the living room – closer to the bathroom, no stairs (well two, not a whole flight). Anything else? He’s already got the “Before Your Surgery” booklet and we’ll look at that more closely once we know more about what he’s having exactly.

Thanks for your stories, guys!

8

I’m neither a guy nor a doctor, so I have no first-hand experience at either end of the issue. I did read an essay about, among other things, hernia surgery, in Atul Gawande’s excellent book Complications (he’s a surgeon, and it’s his thoughts on medicine and surgery.) In it, he talks about the Shouldice Hospital, a medical center outside Toronto that does hernia operations and nothing else, and how this improves surgical outcomes. First of all, the surgeons there have all done thousands of them, and so are faster and have way lower reoccurrence rate than most doctors do. Also, the hospital itself has been built around hernia surgeries, with no TVs or phones in the rooms, and with meals served in a cafeteria downstairs, all of which is aimed at getting patients up and moving around as much as possible, which apparently reduces certain possible post-operative problems. So I guess the take-home message is find someone who’s done at least several hundred operations (the ones at this hospital do 600-800 annually), and make sure to move around a bit in the first couple of days post-op.

9

I had an inguinal hernia repair about two years ago. Immediate post-op pain isn’t that bad. Sorta feels like someone kicked you in the groin about 15 minutes ago. The roughest part about the recovery for me was feeling the stitches in the mesh pull when I rolled over in my sleep. They take a couple of weeks to dissolve, but after they were gone I felt as good as ever. The surgery takes about an hour.

TMI WARNING

A grapefruit-sized purple scrotum is a normal side effect and goes away after a couple of days.

10

I had hernia surgury a little more than a year ago. Outpatient procedure. Knocked out, but not not the whole shebang where they have to breathe for you. I don’t recall any problems with my scrotum at all. The problem area and incision were higher up than that.

The first couple of days were painful. Sore and you move rather tentatively. Gave me Perco-somthing for the pain, but it wasn’t all that bad.

The part that did surprise me, however, was just how *tired *I was afterward. For weeks! No energy at all. I was told that my body was putting all that energy toward healing. I went back to work in 4-5 days, but I’m glad I had an office job b/c I was not up to doing anything strenuous. Kindof weirded me out.

11

I had an inguinal hernia back in 2000. I went into the hospital at 6:30AM and left at a little after noon. I also had the mesh patch installed. I wasn’t completely put out either, but I don’t remeber any of the surgery. I didn’t have laparoscopic, but I did get some kind of internal disolving stitches and the scar is almost non existent. I didn’t have any of the bruising or testicle swelling that others described.

I was wheeled out of the hospital, but was able to walk from the wheelchair to my buddy’s car. I didn’t have much pain but I was tired. I got home and slept for about 12 hrs. I think the lack of pain was due to a pain medication drip that they installed. It was basically a ball full of pain meds with a tube that ran down into the incision. It slowly dripped medication in there for 48 hrs.

I was able to walk around and drive the next day and I felt back to normal(except for half of my pubes being shaved) in 3-4 days. The doctor said that the repair was as strong as it would ever be right after surgery, so I could do whatever I felt comfortable doing. I was back racing motorcross eight days after surgery.

I was prescribed oxycodone as a pain medication, but I stopped using it after the second day. I didn’t really need it.

12

Unless it doesn’t completely go away on one side, and you have to go back in for follow-up surgery to get rid of the swelling, after enduring months of your wife teasing you about lopsidedness.

Have you met the lady with the pelvic prolapse ?

13

Actually, this sounds like an anasthesia after effect, not a surgery after effect. (Caveat: IANAD) 20 years ago I had essentially the same surgery twice. First one was with general anasthesia, and I was in the hospital for a week after it and felt terrible. No energy whatsoever and light-headed. The second one was done with a spinal. I walked out of the hospital 2 hours later and was fine, except for the minor discomfort in the incision area.

Because of this, I now always ask if the procedure can be done with local anasthetic. If not, I tell them I am very sensitive to anasthesia, and please use only the minimum amount.

J.

14

I had a bilateral inguinal hernia repair done in 1975 via the new (at the time) Shouldice procedure. Two weeks of home rest prior to returning to work, and I’ve had zero limitations with respect to lifting since then.

15

This was my experience, exactly. Had the repair done twice, once on each side, about a year apart.
Except I wasn’t racing motocross eight days later. Nine days after the second surgery, I did spend a half-day on horseback rounding up cattle with no problem.

Had the surgery done on Friday both times and went back to work the following Wednesday. Physically, I was able to go back to work Monday both times, but was on paid sick leave so I loafed an extra two days.

16

Had one fixed in the 1950’s. This was back in the days of black rubber gloves and talcum powder in the wound…

17

OK, it is going to be laparoscopic. He goes in the day before for blood work, and then we’re supposed to show up for surgery the next morning at 8:45.

Wish him luck!