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

This thread is amazingly the best source of information on this injury I have found on the internet. Here's my story:

I am an ultimate frisbee player who competes at the elite level. I first experienced groin pain on my left side in october 2006. The pain increased more the harder I pushed my body in a practice or game. Finally, I saw a family physician (dumb idea) who told me to take 6 weeks off to rest my groin pull. I tried exercising, and same pain. Next I went through 5 weeks of physical therapy trying to strengthen the lower abdomen, and still pain. Next I visited and orthopedic doctor who injected my left groin with basically a cortisone shot. That helped the pain for a couple weeks, and it returned again. After 8 months of eating ibuprofen, I finally traveled to duke university for a surgery consultation with Dr. Pappas.

I had bi-lateral surgery on jun 1st with no adductor releases.

I just have a few questions for anyone out there:

Has anyone else had Dr. Pappas for a surgeon? He claimed to train with Dr. Gehret and Meyers and said they were all on the same page.

Also- I recently traveled to Tennesse for the music festival Bonnaroo (bad idea), and experienced tremendous pain from the loud music. Has this happened to anyone else? Is it possible to rip sutures from music?

I'm feeling better now but occasionally have sharp pains on my left side 22 days out of surgery.

I would not wish this injury on my worst enemy.

except for osama

Hi Trevor,

I had permanent suture sh surjery 1.8yrs ago(not mesh). The key word for rebouts of major pain -flareups- is patience.

I asked my surgeon (Dr. William Brown III/ San Jose)) a couple months out if he had to redo any repairs, because I irritated mine, and he said "only once and he was a profesional hockey player." So you probably need RICE.

I have read other sites that talk about nerve entrapment, mesh problems, micro tears and such but please read these posts and do the RICE.

SoKal,

I didn't need an adductor release. This was determined by my describing my symptoms and by his examination. I do know that this does increase the healing time/complications.

For me, the travelling was a 2.5 hour car drive. Armed with Percoset (which had its own horrific constipation side effect for me which was enough to make me quit after one day of using it), it was a matter of settling myself into the right position in a car seat and then riding along was fine.

I would think that an airline seat would be a fair bit worse but ultimately bearable if it had to be done. There were other guys in surgery the day I was there (he did over 10 that day in all) that were flying home as far away as Phoenix so it's not like it's not done.

If it were me, however, I would definitely opt for First Class. Given the money you're going to spend on the surgery, whether covered or not, another $500-800 for upgrading the one way portion of your ticket will be worth it.

Good luck and I will also continue to post occasionally until I am either cured or until I judge it a failure.

Hi Johnny,

but, i had the same symptoms with my thighs being externally rotated. do either of your knees feel like they buckle in? does one of your feet (or both) pronate and/or pigeon toe in?

answer: I also have had minor foot probs plantar fasciaitus. I bought some Dr. Shoals type shoe inserts and they really helped. My lower extremities are not rotated. But after the new support I noticed much better walking posture with the last 3 Years of muscle tightening and imbalance. Last night after thinking about the E of RICE I put a pillow under my gluts. When I woke up I felt my sac release getting out of bed. And I walked a mile much better than yesterday with attention to upright posture etc...So now I'm wondering this will help psoas tightening?

my legs no longer point out like yours. feet and knees are straighter than they have been in years. i still get pains while stretching- especially the lunge/psoas stretch, groin stretches, and hamstring stretches. so i stopped for a while. that allowed me to heal more, now i am aobut to start light yoga again.

answer: I agree do not heavilly stretch the psoas or the sh site.

i have heard that the idea of releasing adductors and other tendons is nuts. those tendons will not heal. what your body probably needs is to lengthen the fascial encasings around the affected muscle compartments. manual therapies can help (above posts).

answer: Tomorrow I will call some accupunturists for the psoas encasings. Deep friction massage and rolfing I will put on hold for my newly undiagnosed soft tissue side. My yr+ surgery side I might pursue.

in my opionion, go see um in germany. with so many of these under her belt, she has seen and treated many variations of it. the labrums should wait till way after any needed sh surgeries, you might find that the labrums can stay as is.

answer: I agree, Thanks for the INFO. I will e-mail her and get a pelvic MRI for Myers or I might make the 5 hr drive to my sh surgeon to diagnose sh.

Hey Willg, thanks for the update.

I had surgery about a month before you and had the exact same problems and panic reaction.

Even though I am taking my rehab really slow I am feeling better every week. Before the surgery I couldn't even hike or bike without pain but this past weekend I went to Yosemite, biked, hiked a lot and felt great. It will probably be a while before I can play soccer but I can see a lot of progress already.

Like many others here I recommend patience after surgery.

Also this rehab exercises really helped me, though I didn't follow the timeline on it

http://www.physioroom.com/injuries/groin_and_pelvis/sports_hernia_exer.php

I will keep posting...

Best wishes for everyone here and thanks for sharing.

sher

how are you feeling?

wondering if your nerves are still agnonizing. wish um had taken my nerve out as well.

keep us updated when you can

johnny

I had a sports hernia operation, running was going great but now 6 mo's later I am feeling the same pain in my groin. Do you think this could be related to the operation?

Does anyone have Dr. Cattey's contact information? Does he check e-mail?

hey trevor

i too am a competitive ultimate player, and i started getting the intense pain about the same time as you (november 2006). i saw a few docs and they each told me different things. i found this thread and realized that my symptoms matched sports hernia dead one (pain in the groin and lower stomach, only on one side, would hurt when i sneezed, squeezed my legs together, did sit-ups, etc. etc.)

i self-diagnosed myself with a sports hernia after exhaustive research online, and decided that i would have surgery. but, i waited 3 months just to be sure. almost zero exercise (no ultimate) during that time. when i came back to the fields for light pick-up, sure enough the pain returned immediately.

surgery time.

for me it was an easy decision. i live in japan and there are few docs who do sports hernia surgery, and you have to wait months. i didn't want to wait. plus, i wanted the best. plus, i wanted minimal recovery time. so, i went to munich to see dr. muschaweck for surgery on the left side.

the first month after surgery i had some definite ups and downs. i was walking and even light jogging a week after surgery, which is typical for dr. M's patients. however, i would still experience the sharp groin pain from time to time (slight slip in the shower, etc.). this was disheartening, but i knew i had to be patient.

at about week 6 i had a big turning point, which i think was at least in part due to adding swimming to the rehab menu. almost exactly two months post-surgery i played in a full on weekend tourney. a gnarly nines tourney. it was probably ill-advised, but i had that tourney marked on my calendar for months and was determined not to miss it.

i was SUPER happy and relieved to play the entire weekend pain free. i really wasn't sure what would happen, was definitely worried about whether everything would hold up. but it did. since then i have been playing a couple times a week and went another competitive tourney last weekend. still some ups and downs (occasionally i will feel slightly sore in the groin after a good workout), but its light years removed from where i was before surgery, and the overall curve is clearly towards improvement. \

i can still feel slight dull pain in the left groin when i squeeze my legs together. but, it is not sharp like it used to be, and each week it's slightly better. or, it may be that this slight pain will remain. that's fine -- it doesn't prevent me from doing anything sports-related.

anyway, i guess this doesn't answer your main question, but i thought i would share my story anyway. you did what you needed to do. now, all you can do is be patient. if you are a competitive disc player then you are in great shape and your body will heal relatively fast. just give it time, and try to stay positive.

best of luck to you and everyone else out there.

I would just call his office. Go to http://www.richardcattey.com and click on "office info". He did my surgery in the spring of 2006.

check out this blog

http://www.sportsherniablog.blogspot.com

hey johnny i am still in germany, i went to see peter for a treatment, he moved my tailbone, he said it was shifted to the right. Since then i haven't been walking. He said it never happened to him before. I think now he is scared to treat me.He said i have too much nerve irritation now. I am doing some acupancture and if it doesn't work i will do the injections(homeopathic). My pelvis is so off now after he moved my tailbone but what can i do, i guess it is a risk going to someone to do treatment you never know what the outcome will be. Hope you are doing better than me and if you have any suggestions for me let me know.

sher

that sucks! i am sorry i posted their info, it was thrown out there as an idea since you were already in germany.

i have had my tailbone moved "back into place" and the result was soreness for a few days but after that the sij pains began to resolve.

i hope you are getting better aside from that! i am still battling with these nerve pains. i spoke with dr um's through her secretary and she is suggesting lots of painkillers and vitamin b6 plus b12. ugh. i wish i could go to germany to see this doctor you are but there is no way i can afford it.

johnny

sher,

Not good news on your situation. Can you keep us posted on your progress?

sher, i wish i did have a suggestion for you, and i also wish someone had suggestions for me as well.

the "good" news is i emailed dr meyers and he said he has treated many patients with post op lingering pain. not too sure if they have gotten fixed or not, but my guess is that many of them did find relief.

how has the homeopathic treatment been going?

i hope you are walking again and the adjustment only yeilded temporary pain!

Osaru, Willg and others, thanks for the updates. I find it really useful to hear details of people's progress both pre and post surgery. Some are probably hesitant to repeat what they've already posted, but I find it easier to hear the whole story again than go back through earlier posts.

As I posted a few weeks ago, I thought I might avoid surgery, as even after going off the Indocin that Meyer's prescribed, I was still able to run without pain. But three and a half weeks ago, climbing around at work, the hilly five miles I ran, or the combination of the two has put me right back where I was last fall and winter. I have had no real recovery since that day. I am in the same pattern as always: I try and run a bit until I overdo it, and then it is ALWAYS 5-6 days of recovery (if I don't do much during that time). Has anyone else experienced this pattern? The depressing thing is that I now seem to get some lower groin or adductor pain, whereas before my only pain was centered below my belly button.

I was supposed to see Meyer's again this week, but decided to wait until September when I could actually go ahead with surgery if he thinks it will work.

In the meantime, I am especially anxious to hear progress reports from those of you who have had surgery by him. Of recent posters, Run Daddy is the one person who seemed to be mostly out of the woods. I will have to decide soon, and need to guage when I can fit the recovery into my work schedule. I'm older than most of you (55) so I have to allow for an even longer recovery time. It seems, though, that I can't keep building houses and doing anything recreational without the knife. One or the other, maybe, but definitely not both.

Thanks to everyone for all the info.

Jeff

Jeff, yesterday marked 8 weeks post surgery for me. So nobody has to read past messages from me, I had bi-lateral pelvic floor repair from Dr. Meyers, no adductor release but he found an inguinal on my right side when he went in so he repaired that too. Since my last post (not even two weeks ago), I have to say a lot has changed. I have played hockey twice, sprinted twice and done some relatively hard workouts in between. The pain on my left side is gone. It has been replaced by more general pain/soreness 'in the area' (no more acute pains in actual places I can point out) but I am quite comfortable that this pain has purely been because I've 'stepped it up' and honestly it's pretty mild as pain goes. I know it's there but it's not particularly debilitating.

Dr. Meyers put me on Indocin for the next month to help with the inflammation that the increased exercise is causing. I felt so good the day after he gave me the prescription (without having started) that I didn't take it the first couple of days but after feeling pain I started and am now committed to adhering to it.

It has taken me a while to establish some consistency with this recovery but I believe I'm noticing that it happens in microstages. I go a little harder than 'before' and the pain starts but not to the point that I can't continue. Then after a day or two it stops (even while working through it) and I can continue that pace pain free. Then I notch it up another level and the pain starts again, same routine, a day or two later that level no longer bothers me.

I'm about 90% to the level of activity I had before SH started to affect me. For me, this recovery is absolutely slow and incremental but it's always there.

If it keeps up like it's going, I imagine it will be another 3-4 weeks but after that point I think it will be as if SH never happened to me. This might be a bit of wishful thinking but if the last weeks are an indicator it will happen. Frankly, even if my recovery stopped 'now' I would consider the surgery to have been a success. As long as I don't go backwards I'm happy.

I don't know what another 14 years (I'm 41) means for recovery and of course there are many (Dr. Meyers says 18) variations of this injury but I think this will have definitely worked for me and the most overriding thing I can say is that recovery is extremely incremental, that you must adhere to the recovery plan as much as you are able and that all of the pains along the way are not to be considered on their own, try to look at the recovery week to week or even in two week increments.

I'm not completely out of the woods yet so I will post again when it either happens or something not so good happens. Anyone feel free to ask any questions, this forum was invaluable for me.

WILL

Good post, Will. I'm sure, as I did, suffers who find this resource are grateful that nearly real-time updates are available in a click.

I'll continue the conversation with an update on my surgery with Dr. Meyers, now into week 12.

At this point, most patients (according to Meyers) should be back to their sport, ready and raring to go.

But, as Johnny has pointed out, as relayed through Dr. Um in Munich, the longer you had the pain/tear, the longer it will take to heal.

So at 12 weeks, sitting here today, I'm better than I was at 9 weeks, but certainly not in any shape to go play a game of tennis, even if it was with the over 70 crew.

Raking leaves 5 nights ago hurt and caused me pain for the next several days. And I'm on Indocin too.

The pain only exists on the left side, as my right side has been all but perfectly healed since week 3!

The left always gave me more of a hard time.

So, as Johnny has outlined here, the nerves register pain and don't forget...there is imprinting happening where the nerves just can't get back to homeostasis. This is requiring me to see a chiropractor, who's helped, an acupuncturist and a rolfer.

If you're like me, you had the injury for a couple of years and became imbalanced, if you weren't already, which is a very plausible scenario as to why the tear occurred in the first place. Trying to regain the balance, while strengthening is tough!

So, I haven't run or even really exerted myself since the operation; I am listening to my body, it's just not ready for that. Johnny can attest. But, to Will's point, there are micro-improvements and that's what keeps me hopeful.

I know there are others with stories about recovery that span the gamut. If there is anyone who had a tedious/long recovery, please post!

On to keeping a positive outlook while increasing activity incrementally...

Thanks,

Joe

hi joe,

great post, thanks a lot!

i made an appt with a world-reknowned homeopath, whose approach can hopefully work on reversing that nerve pain memory. i admit i am a bit afraid but it beats the other option of meyers or anyone else opening me up again (screw that!).

if i can talk a doc into nerve blocks before that appt, i will take them, but so far i have had no luck with any doctors even wanting to treat me since they have no idea what a sh is. and god forbid they learn from a patient.

my body/structure is more or less back to normal as far as the ability to support my hips, etc...the only problem now is apparently nerve pain. the pain is enough to alter my days and nights as far as activities go. but i can finally bend over to pick stuff up without favoiring one side over the other. i attribute that to the manual therapy.

johnny