April 14, 2008

"Repair"sounds strange

Belated though, let me wish you a very Happy New Year 2065.

I was hospitalized for some days, so couldn't update and reply to comments. I was not much updated about CA elections results from Nepal too.

I underwent a minor surgery to get my hernia repaired. It was on the right side of my lower abdomen, a type of hernia called direct inguinal hernia.

Though you can consider any medication, especially surgery as repairing your body, repair sounds strange. The body part of us, basically, is a very complicated machine. But I find it very hard to imagine it as a machine.

It must have been some months, or even one year ago when I saw a small bulge in the right side of my lower abdomen. I didn't care about it at that time as it was not painful. But from around three months ago, the bulge was big enough to be serious. I started to have pain there too, especially after walking or standing for a long time. It was not visible when lying down.

Not having much medical knowledge, I couldn't decide where to go. Thinking that it might be related to some problem in my kidney, I went to an urologist's first. I took his medicine for two weeks and seeing no improvement (but my urine most have become very "clean!"), he referred me to a surgeon. The surgeon told me that it was better to operate and repair it before it became "incarcerated", meaning it didn't go back inside even when lying down.

The method of repairing was tension free plug method, which uses plug and mesh. It is the first time that anything foreign has entered my body. This is what I found in the homepage of British Hernia Centre about the merits of this method;

Once inserted, the mesh rapidly becomes incorporated within the muscle and
surrounding tissue and forms the core of a much stronger area within the
abdominal wall. This is very similar to the way builders put a steel mesh inside
reinforced concrete.

Although the mesh we use is wafer-thin, lightweight (yet extremely strong), the
principle is the same, in that the mechanical load becomes spread over the whole
area rather than pulling on any individual stitches through the muscles.


It seems to happen mostly in men (another type of hernia called femoral hernia is more common among women) and after 40. This "after 40" is little bit painful to me. I am not yet 40! Such things are enough to make you sad! And I remembered, one of my friends had the same repaired when he was 33. This gave me a little solace:)

Jokes aside, hernias can occur to anybody at any age. Hernias can happen to other parts of body too, but most common is in the abdomen. Surgery is the only treatment. It can't be healed by taking medicine only.

So if you have any symptoms, be serious and get it "repaired" soon.

"Repair" sounds strange though!

4 comments:

  1. You reminded me about a Chinese saying:"久病成良医"

    Meaning "a long illness makes the patient a good doctor" .

    Seems that you have gained quite a lot knowledge and information about hernia and and it's repair procedures ,.

    We didn't knew about it when you were in hospital, but now it gives us ease to hear that you are fit and fine.

    Get well soon and take care!, Our best wishes are always with you.

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  2. wish you all the best for your health!!

    thanx for posting such useful information. I did not know briefly about hernia before.

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  3. I hope you are completely healed now. Thanks for sharing the symptoms.

    I was so grappled with following results of CA polls in Nepal, I didn't even had chance to follow some of my regular blogs :)

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  4. Thank you Dilip dai, Badrijee and Prajwoljee for your best wishes. I am doing well now.

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