Did labral tear surgery reduce your PN/pelvic/perineal pain?

[Antonia]

Don't stop fighting until you get an answer. See every doctor on the planet until you find one who will actually diagnose. That's just my advice. My first doc insisted my MRI was clean (he'd never looked at it, just read the report). 2nd radiologist was looking mainly at the spine and nerves. 3rd time? Hey, you have a really bad labral tear, lady! And a torn hamstring tendon. I fly out in 3 days for surgeries and a month of PT. But I never would've gotten an answer if I hadn't planted myself in a 2nd hospital (after 8 doctors and one 4 day stay in another hospital) and said I wasn't leaving until I was either diagnosed or gotten an appt. at Mayo and had a flight arranged.

That's just my 2 cents.

[beverley]

i had vaginal numbness after the surgery with dr coleman which nobody told me about -- and it is pretty common. if you go onto hip sites (not pudendal sites) you can read about it. the numbness totally freaked me out but went away after about a month. my only continued advice to all that get the surgery is to make sure you do a lot of PT afterwards and approach new activities slowly. I reinjured myself about 9 months after surgery and am still not recovered from it. Good luck Antonia.

[Antonia]

PT starts tomorrow (the other surgical issues, had it all done at once).

You reinjured at 9 months?!? Yow!! What did you do to reinjure? I'm sorry. I"d scroll back but am still really groggy and shouldn't type much right now anyway.....at least these words make sense unlike the ones on my iPhone 2 hours ago....Anyway, I just want to go back to walking for now, tell me you didn't do it like that!!

BTW, turns out I had FAI! An impinged hip! AND labral tear. I am going to write a book, blog etc It seems unlikely that I can sue the chiro, though he caused the actual labral tear and sent me un to get injured the rest of the way and did it all without having had a license for SIX YEARS. Beyond HIS malfeasance though, the next to the last doc I saw in KC told me to stop seeking medical treatment. To go home and live life as normal instead. As if I could've! I got treated horribly, and while my woo woo hippy dippy pelvic floor therapist thinks people shouldn't get angry, says it will keep me sick and quite a few other spiritual concepts that I personally don't hold as truths (rather the opposite, that you always must fight!!) thinks that it's helpful for women who've been through pelvic pain to write books to help and inspire others, I plan to write a slightly different book.

I think we get ignored. I know I did. Everything found (I went IN complaining of hip pain and abdominal muscle injuries, possibly tears) today validated what I thought happened. But they turned me from a "Hey, I'm a sports injury, just need some help!" into the 'chronic pain woman who should be ignored' and referred on over to pelvic floor people". For the love of whatever it is I still believe in (which isn't much), I tore my freakin' rectus abdominis! And an adductor! And my hip was injured! And the hamstring! I'm being fixed, and certainly validated, HERE NOW, but I want to write on this. And hit local media. I certainly can't do enough to expose the fake chiro as he faces board actions, but this is a different issue. This is doctors not even being willing to LOOK for the issue or injury when they should be. This could've been DXed and fixed within a week, but I spent 2 months before even being able to be gotten INTO an ortho being asked "why I thought there was something wrong with me".

There needs to be a reckoning. At least in my community, I am going to be writing this up, naming names, and updating my progress. We shouldn't have to go THROUGH this crap!

Sorry, I was given tons of Versed and dilaudid and am in a ton of pain. But even before that, I didn't want to just "heal", I wanted to get better, better than before and take everyone involved to task. Does anyone else feel this way?

[deBBieW]

Hi antonia,
With all the pain you were in, I don't know how physicians could ignore you, or the circumstances of your injury. But you pushed on, and it sounds like you have had a ton of repair work done. Just take it easy now, go slow. It sounds like you all fired up (and I don't blame you) but take it easy, and I hope you heal fully, and quickly.
How is the care at the Vincera Institute?

Thinking of you,
Debbie

[Antonia]

Everything here is excellent, and I mean that. The pain I was in is gone except for where I was sewn back together. Still on crutches (hip), and Vincera is being still built up. Dr. Coleman was SO very nice, and explained everything so well! I can't believe he took so much time with us, though Dr. Meyers did as well and continues to. Coleman said my labral tear was "significant" and also that I had minor FAI. I do still have swelling (the incisions for the non-hip surgery are lower ab, very low) and some pain there, but not too much. Mainly, the pain I was having (other than hip, which will be sore until it does heal) is pretty much gone. It's amazing to me that Dr. Meyers was able to make two small incisions and repair 10 muscles (yeah, it turned out to be that bad) and a tendon through such small incisions, no damage further to any muscle, and he checks on me daily when I am there for PT.

There are people here who have gone years without a diagnosis, and are now recovering. It's wonderful to see, and to experience myself. My only bad experience was having relatives visit yesterday and us showing our favorite hilarious YouTube videos. Laughing that hard with abdominal incisions is not something I'd recommend, but otherwise, as long as you don't laugh too hard, everything is good! So glad I came here!

Hope everyone is feeling OK, and sorry I was so fired up.....I have had some memory issues since general anesthesia as well as a few fits of moodiness from the pain meds, which I'm now switching to Aleve.

I still highly recommend at least sending out those disks you might get of the hip joint, if no one locally will pay attention to you, out to the top surgeons for hip repairs. None of mine charged for consults at all, and all recommended surgery but didn't push themselves. It's better having someone who specializes in this look at your imaging than someone who perhaps does little. One local hip specialist told me he didn't even know how this was being classified as a labral tear (the MRI I demanded in the 2nd hospital I went to), and he rarely even does labral tear repairs. Dr. Coleman told us he does about 10 per week, and saw the tear and impingement immediately, before I ever met him. There's no point in using local docs if they have little to no experience and won't take your injuries seriously, especially if they're right there on a scan in front of them.

[kathyd]

Hi Antonia
Glad to see you finally got your answer and seem to be on the mend.
I can understand how you feel with anger. I am right there with ...have symtoms that have only worsened over 7 years of treatment and pursuit of answers and prbably seen all the same docs. ,,, even the hippy dippy folks who tell me I'm angry at that situation. my husband. whatever and thats why Im still in un Godly pain.
Im am a very high strung anxious person so Im beginning to wonder myself, if my fear and anger are putting me into spasm and causing the pain.
Mine is a long story.

I have bladder frequency/hesitancy and severe anal rectal pain, which first started as sit bone pain...
I made the mistake of surgery with Dr. Dellon ( after months of sayin no! my doc finally talked me into it...and I ended up with the anal pain!

I also had the labral tear repari done in 2009 as the same doc was apart of study in which people with labral tears were fixed with surgery and their vulvar or bladder pain wenr away.
I often wonder if whatever position they had me in afer surgery caused the pain with sitting as it was minor prior to that but by mid 2010 it became painful enough that I ended up being sent to Dellon etc ..
Did you see the Dr Colemen in NYC? He was very nice and told me I had "significnt damage " also and that I needed the surgery. The differece was that I had no hip pain at all ans was just doing the surgery as per my docs advice in the above study. I often wondered if should do another MRI as my docs wanted but with no hip pain I didnt think it was needed
I also saw Meyers (hernia doc in Philly) in hoped of hidden hernia... but after questions and a fairly short exam ,, he started referring me to pudendal surgery team in Houston..
I still an unsure that PN is my RX as blocks never helped and there was no sign on 2 Potter MRIs of entrapments.
So I am beginning what to do next.
Anyway just wanted to say I understood your frustration and the fact the we patients with less than obvious symptoms should be treated with respect by everyone
as this takes more courage than anything most folks will ever face.
Best of luck to you

[Antonia]

kathyd, well, I don't know your whole story, but I do not buy this "it's emotional" nonsense. Well, I knew it didn't apply in my case. I was injured on two very specific occasions, and the muscle spasms were due to injury and compensation. My final PT barely even would acknowledge that perhaps the muscles weren't filled with trigger points and that I could simply heal myself over a period of years, it was (and I really like this woman, and she really knows her stuff, but there are chronic problems that may have emotional and/or nerve components, and then there are massive sudden injuries) always a collection of things I had done "wrong" in my life to cause such pelvic problems. THen again, my uro-gyno and PT thought that me having been DXed with interstitial cystitis 20 years previous to this was proof that I've been suffering from pelvic pain for decades, including the spasms I was having, etc. and only admitted at the end that the one didn't have anything to do with the other. I feel bad, they were only trying to help, and I learned a lot, but I didn't end up with hip problems because I like bucket seats and sports cars, I had my labrum forcefully torn by someone who had no idea what he was doing. Then I ripped 10 muscles off the pubic bone. Yeah, I did a lot to cause my problems, but a lifetime of bucket seats and being a perfectionist with perhaps a bit too much vim and vigor weren't the cause of the pain directly, it was (duh) having a torn labrum and 10 torn muscles. Tendons, too.

Sorry for the rant. Kathy, I saw Coleman at Vincera in Philly and also Meyers. Got my hip stitches out today. I love it, things are going quite well with the PT, and I feel like everything is being addressed. In my case, though, I was coming to them for the exact things they specialize in, each of these docs. My case was pretty much textbook for these docs, just out of left field for the doctors back home. (THe one thing I hate is that they kept telling me that if there WAS muscle damage, it would show on the MRIs I'd had. Why do they say that if it's completely false? Anyway...)

I wish I had an answer for you. All I can say is that there IS a cause. For all of these problems, there IS a cause, and just because a doctor (or 100 doctors) cannot find it doesn't mean it's in your head, being caused by something in your head, etc. It means they cannot find and fix it or that there is not existing technology to fix it. Keep looking. The tips and meds to help you live with it can be great, very helpful, and if you can live with it, I guess that's a good course, too. But otherwise, keep on searching.

I wish you the very best of luck, truly. No one should have to go through these horrors.

Thanks everyone for putting up with my overly passionate posts, I am an activist at heart, and it breaks my heart that I am surrounded by fellow patients who searched for YEARS before a diagnosis because no one would listen to them. One week was too much for me, 8 months a nightmare, but seeing people daily who have been disabled for years by injuries that are now fixed is both inspiring and a bit maddening. Keep the faith in yourselves.

[Antonia]

Kathy--what was the surgery you're talking about that ended you up with the anal pain?!?

Did Coleman do the surgery? Sorry, just trying to put together the story you have here! Feel free to just message me;)

[beverley]

Antonia: no walking did not reinjure me. I am very athletic and started doing the sports that I do and yoga -- which was all given thumbs up by dr coleman and my PT (who in retrospect wasn't very good) and it caused a relapse. my hip is fine but I have revved up my ilioinguinal nerve and it wont calm down. Now everyone is saying I should have had more PT and not done as much activity as soon as a did. and then on top of all that my pelvic pain specialist gave me a pudednal nerve block that send me over the edge with worse pain than where I started. it has been a long nine months. but I love your attitude and I have had the same. you just have to perservere.

[Antonia]

Ahh, I see. I'm planning on going as slow as I can, but I did have to fly back home. I'm trying to set up PT here, and might call Coleman for a list of definite DON'Ts. I'm also very athletic, but am in no shape to go back to what I was doing, not yet walking either, and was a bit surprised at how little exit strategy I was given (not Coleman, but the Institute). Doing PT at home for now exactly as I had done it there according to protocol. Just still quite a bit of pain and soreness, though the pelvic floor stuff stopped immediately. Kind of nice to do a kegel again without it causing massive spasms.

I'm so sorry you had a relapse of the nerve issue. I am kind of glad I don't know about these nerve blocks...few here seem to have had any success with them. I can't believe yours made it worse than before, that's terrible! What prognosis have you been given, if any? Do they think it may calm back down on its own? My only nerve experience is in the face (trigeminal), and after enough tegretol it did just finally stop firing like crazy. I do hope you get better sooner rather than later, and thanks for being here to educate the newly initiated like myself (and apparently I don't have a nerve issue there, or at least the post-op pain is doing a good job of covering it up).