Anyone ever had a "Sports Hernia" aka: "Sportsman's hernia", "Gilmore's groin", or &quot

johnny, i can\'t believe nobody wants to help your back because you did a surgery somewhere else. Whats happening to doctors? I thought their job is to HELP people. Johnny, for you s.i. joint try prolotherapy there is a very good doctor, here in Canada but i am sure there is one in the states too. Also biking is very good to stabalize the s.i. joint. What exercise do you do that aggrevates your s.i.? maybe you are not ready to do any extreme movements yet. For me it reached a point that i couldn\'t even walk because of back pain, what helped me was the steroids i got in my s.i. joint.

Sher,

My dear sister. Its soo sad reading all these posts you almost sound like a doctor. I am sure that whatever option you choose will be the right choice. It took forever to diagnose what you have and I'm glad that now its just a quesiton of choosing where to go to get it fixed.

We love you,

shooks ;)

sher,

yes, i agree. before i had my diagnosis with dr um i saw 26 doctors with about 130 some visits total. they would not do an mri of pelvis because it wasn't medically necessary in their eyes. now that they were all wrong, i am stuck between a rock and a hard place even more so.

since dr um i have seen an additional 10 or 12 docs/practitioners.

the exercises i do- yoga and walking, pilates strap exercises, and general stretching and just starting to do things such as gardening. i am going to ride a bike as soon as my new seat arrives.

i am also wondering if i have an obturator nerve entrapment on one side- i have all the symptoms and my manual therapist says that the nerve is very irritated. this sucks big time.

he has been treating the si joing pretty well to the point that the pain is going away and the hip is opening up from where it locked down. most of my pain is along the inguinal ligament and just below it, but also medial of the ligament. it sure sounds like the nerves injured in the sh but it's hard to tell when the doctors won't do crap.

johnny

johnny, maybe you need to get your adductor released after all. You still have the same pain in your sports hernia site as you had before? what does Urlike say about it? Did you try using lidocaine? it reduces the irritation of the nerve.Don't you sometimes say that you should have gone to Meyer's after all? It pisses me off that doctor's won't help, its the same here in Canada.

sher,

no, my adductor pain is much less. this relief has been helped via manual therapy. i do have tings of pain here and there. i have not gotten the injections since no docs here will do it. that will change hopefully next week when i see a new doc.

dr um gave me injection solutions in march to bring to a pain mgmt doc here, but that pain mgmt doc won't give me the shots since the surgery was done abroad and he doesn't understand it. again, between a rock and a hard place.

btw, i hear that dr muldar in canada is good for sh surgery as well. not sure of full name, #, or where, all i know is that he has worked with the montreal canadiens.

I have seen Dr Mulder in Montreal but for some reason he told me to think really really hard before doing the surgery. He said because my injury has been there for so long that he doesn't know it the surgery will help. So.... i decided not to go to him.

What advice do people have about getting authorization to see a Dr. who is "out of network?" I want to see Dr. Meyers in Philly but the $ differential is too much unless I get network authorization.

Any ideas?

Coach, if you pay private the hospital cost with Dr Meyers will be much less. Most insurance don't cover this type of operation for some reason. That is why many people travel to Germany were it is much cheaper.

dr um says that the longer you have the injury before you get surgery, the longer it takes to go away.

remeber how grant hill retired due to post-op issues?

i don't know how long he took a break for but he is playing again.

i never really doubted going to dr um over anyone else. there is a reason so many patients in the us are referred to her. she has done so many of these surgeries, way more than anyone else, and that is her specialty; she is the hernia champ.

i don't think i need an adductor release, i trust dr um's judgement on that. she has seen this many, many times before. the adductor pain is caused by an irritated nerve. tight muscles and fascia can be loosened and stretched. that is also the purpose of slicing the adductor tendon- to relieve the stress on the muscle and its attachments along the pubic bone. if it can be relieved via noninvasive methods, then sign me up. i have enough scar tissue in me already. if it takes longer to heal teh soreness around the muscle group, then so be it, i just don't want to be cut anymore.

i did have the injury 18 months, badly, before the diagnosis.

i am much better than beforehand. still healing.

it is frustrating since i cannot find a competant doc around where i live to do any kind of therapy for me aside from "alternative" methods.

the pain management prescribed lyrica, to cover up the pain. like that is going to fix the problem. i am not excited about a shotgun approach that will cover up pain, especially via a drug that is pretty new. who knows what that drug will do in 10 years?

so, sher, i am glad that i went the route i did with dr um. meyers could have been a good route as well but um costs less, uses less anesthesia (which i am not good with), and the patients are treated very, very well. and teh follow-up is remarkable. i have had 7 surgeries and have never seen the type of care that i have from um's clinic.

Johnny, I was on lyrica for one month, you can try it, it is only for a couple of months not for the rest of your life. The side effects are hooooooorible to me so thats why i stopped using it. But it helps with nerve irritations it brakes the cycle of pain.

hey johnny,

I am leaving to germany in 10 days, I finally decided to go to germany and get the surgery. I will probably stay there for rehab as well. I will post my experience and my recovery. Hope everything is well with you and you are getting close to 100 percent.

hi sher,

good luck! dr um is a great woman. tell her that john from ny says hello, she will know who i am.

btw, i did not take the lyrica due to the nasty side effects. during my 18 mos of misdiagnosis, i was put on various different drugs, none of which helped. one of them was levaquin, a very strong antibiotic, which i was put on for 1.5 months for a non-existent bacterial infection that they thought they should treat me for just in case. i had lots of adr's including massive weight loss, hair loss, blurred vision, brown urine, and more. i will never take any recommended pills again unless absolutely necessary. drug side effects can be very devestating...

while you are in munich, be sure to enjoy the many restaurants, beer gardens, and the scene along the isar, it is a great city.

johnny, I just tore the other side, it happened to me on Friday i thought it was only a strain of the ligament but today i can't move my other leg and my adductor is painfull. I am sitting in ice. yep its the good leg that is painfull now. And i said to myself all the time it can't get any worse. I guess it can.... I am thinking i tore the other side as well although my chiropractor told me he thinks i sprained the ligament. So yes indeed, both sides. I can't move. I don't even know how i will get on that flight to Germany. If i sparined the ligament i have to lay down with my leg up for 4 weeks. Lovely, i just spent almost 2 years in bed rest. I also can't stand medications i am on celebrex right now and also losing weight, i am telling you this injury is the best diet ever. I can become a runway model very soon, but the question is can i walk the runway? give me some encouragment Johhny, Please!!!!

sher,

you probably didn't tear anything- from what i understand, corretctly or not, is that the sh injury really kicks in gradually, in other words, the pain gets worse over time, as you already know.

my advice, for what it is or what it isn't worth, is to see a good manual therapist such as a rolfer before you go under the knife. they can release some tension in the muscles before surgery so you can have an easier recovery and also an easier time with the flights.

dr um will know what is up. you should also bring copies of your mris and any other prints.

i couldn't walk for a few months, then i found a great pt who got me better to a cetain extent, to the point where i could swim and do light hiking, before the surgeries. that definitely helped. but i wish i had gone to a rolfer beforehand, or the right kind of acupuncturist, so i could get some of those clenched muscles (due to the sh pain) to relax. i imagine that tight muscles have a harder time in recouperating, as would muscles that suffer atrophy. so i think it's best to try to take care of some things before you leave just to be ahead of the recoup protocol.

you should be fine- dr um has seen thousands of patients, and there are many that have had the injury much longer than a couple of years, and with more accumilated damage. it will/can take time to get over even after the operations. you will still be nervous as was i but when you meet dr um and her staff things will calm down for you. above all, realize that you are going over to finally get this fixed, and while you are there, enjoy your time in munich. it will feel totally different than any hospital or doc office you have ever visited in the us, and that sort of removal from the norm tends to help take your mind of the fact that you are there for surger(ies).

good luck

john

Has anyone taken 3 or more months totally off then started with lite pt... ie not rushing to run again?

I curious like others, if what mayo clinic says is false- Nature will heal it with time.

Also, I'm ok with not being able to race, and just maybe be a weekend jogger. At the moment - I'm able to do a full pt workout of the abs without any problems, the next day or two afterwards i'm a little tight/sore. But that seems to be getting better (quicker recover and increased workload).

Am I healing or just kidding myself?

I'll know in about six weeks. I've done just that, and Meyers told me that it is not necessarily true that SH never heals. He put me on a strong anti-inflamatory, and gave me an excersise program. I'm up to four miles every other day, and filling in with biking. My thought is that maybe the meds have let me finally stregnthen stuff around the attachment, because my core is beginning to feel stronger. I've given up soccer for the time being, but a few months ago could not walk three miles, run two, or do even two sit-ups without paying a price for a few days. That was after seven weeks completely off everything except a bit of walking. Still no sit-ups, doing just a few crunches with my upper abdomen. It seems like my progression is similar to those who had the full-blown surgery, after their month of rest. I'll be testing it heavily the next three weeks though, as I'm a contractor and we just started framing a house. Not sure I could return to athletics any time soon without surgery, but my work makes me somewhat like an athlete in that I don't have total control over how much I use my body.

Jeff

My wife is experiencing similar symptoms and we are scheduled to meet Dr. Meyers next week. I have a PPO plan with united healthcare and they seem to be hassling covering this surgery. Was curious if anyone else dealt with UnitedHealthcare and if so, what was the result. For those of you that paid from your pockets could you tell me what the total expense was -- i got some initial numbers from Marcia, wanted to know from someone that has been through it.

Thanks

I had a bit of trouble because the insurance co didn't believe SH was a real injury. Look up scientific articles and show them that this is a real injury. Have them contact Meyers, etc. Make sure you let them know Meyers is NO quack and that this is a real injury with an effective surgery.

Once I made the doc from my insurance company realize I wasn't being sold a bill of good he let the surgery fly.

That's my experience.

LONG POST ALERT - sorry

I posted back in August of 2006 on this thread. My physiatrist who is an athlete, ultimately diagnosed a hip adductor tear, abdominal strain, etc. He wanted me to try to heal conservatively rather than do surgery.

My symptoms were similar to others

"My main symptoms are pain in the right testicle, pain through the inguinal ligaments on that side as well as hip and sometimes lower right back. Frankly sometimes it can go up and down my whole right side. I also have some pain up and down the shaft of my penis on the right side that feels like a pulling sensation. . . ."

Certainly, the inguinal nerve was involved given the pain radiating into my penis and what felt like my kidneys. I had perineum pain and a pressure sensation in the pubic area.

At the onset in May, the pain was significant, but with "reduced" running" - 3 times per week - the pain became chronic, low grade, but unrelenting. All imaging testing was negative (I seriously thought I had some sort of cancer) so, on the bright side that workup was negative.

ANYWAY - physical therapy in August was too painful and made my hip adductors tighter. So, I stopped. I started cycling which did not seem to effect my symptoms. But, I continued to have low grade constant symptoms.

Finally, I stopped running completely on December 24 after a five mile run with my wife caused a bad flare up of symptoms. So, on the advise of my physiatrist, I stopped doing any core exercises and any physical activity, I just wanted it to calm down

I didn't do anything (other than drink beer and gain weight) for 8 weeks. The symptoms subsided. I ran one day, and they came back. I took another week off and slowly returned to bicycling on the trainer - no problems. In January, I added swimming. Since then, I've averaged swimming 2 days per week. At first, I couldn't even kick without symptoms, but now I can do kick drills without symptoms.

I also have averaged (built up to) 4 days a week cycling a minimum of 25 miles up to 65 with no symptoms at a good clip (17 - 25 mph on flats). No symptoms.

I've run twice in May - 4 miles and 5.5 miles (8 minute pace). What I've noticed is that, at the end of the run, my adductors are slightly sore, and my lower abdomen feels sligtly strained, but that goes away quickly.

What does this mean? I think taking 5 months off from running has enabled me to heal significantly. I have no pain doing activities of daily living. I can rake my lawn, and haul dirt in a wheelbarrow. I needed to do that since I couldn't rake at all in the fall. So, I'm certainly much better, and can be very active.

I've been given the green light for some light core strengthening (Yoga - NOT pilates). I'm slowly adding some sit ups. All in all, I feel stronger.

So, yes, rest has been an excellent tool for me; however, I don't know if I'll ever run 6 days a week again.