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Inguinal hernia pain, Inguinal hernia recovery, Inguinal hernia surgery pain, Suggestions for coping with pain
I am not totally out of danger yet but my recovery from inguinal hernia surgery was spectacularly benign. Perhaps it was because I asked my surgeon to do a good job, which was said in a joking way, and yet if there was a moment during the procedure where there was a doubt about some little detail, maybe he was a bit more careful. My recovery was much easier than any of the other guys I’ve talked to who had similar surgeries.
There is now almost zero uncontrolled pain, and just to check how the healing is progressing I am doing some experiments, like gently poking the surface incision and observing how much touch pressure is needed to create just a tiny bit of pain. I am doing that experiment right now.
Now, on the eleventh post-operation day the external cut can be tapped with my index finger quickly, and not too gently, without creating any bothersome pain. I don’t mean poking the cut vertically, I mean quickly tapping it with the flat of an extended finger. On my Pain Scale created back in 2006 I would call my present pain – PAINS~1 (Slight, I can feel it when I look for it but not if I don’t.) I only feel this tapping pain the instant my finger hits the wound site and all pain is gone in a quarter of a second.
Pain Scale – For measuring the intensity of human pain – click to enlarge
There is another pain to be considered in this experiment, and that is the internal surgery site where the abdominal wall (inguinal falx) had been torn open, which allowed a loop of intestine to poke out to the inside of the external abdominal skin. The internal tear was sutured back together by the surgeon and a patch mesh was overlaid on that sutured zone and then the mesh stitched to the inner intestinal wall.
When I press with my fingertip into that inner surgery site with more of a poking use of the finger there can be some pain. It is a PAINS~3 when pushing on it but strangely if one pound of steady unmoving pressure is held on the painful site, in a few seconds that PAINS~3 drops to a PAINS~1. Therefore, a broad belt, or a hernia truss, can be worn over the surgery site without pain if it can be maintained at an even pressure.
I don’t know the actual size of my patch, but by poking gently with my finger that internal area of slight pain now seems to be about four inches square centered on the lower end of the outer incision. I wouldn’t be able to report any of this if I didn’t do these experiments, and they don’t help me much, but I report them to you in hopes that they will ease your pain and discomfort.
If you have any experience with these or similar experiments, good, bad or otherwise, please comment.
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