In the fall of 2023, I began noticing a small lump on the right side of my lower abdominal area. I had noticed it before, but whenever I brought it up to my doctor, I was always told that it was just scar tissue from my hernia repair that was done 30 years ago. Eventually, it began to grow so obvious that it could no longer be ignored, so I brought it up to my doctor again. This time, it was diagnosed as a recurrent inguinal hernia, and was told that the left side might also have a hernia, though it would need to be confirmed with imaging.
I met with a few surgeons and settled on Dr Hideo Takahashi at Mount Sinai Hospital in Greenlawn, NY. He also diagnosed me with an umbilical hernia, which I decided to have fixed as well. We scheduled laparoscopic surgery with mesh for December 27, 2023. It was decided that Dr Takahashi would repair the inguinal hernia on the right side and the umbilical hernia, but would make the final decision about the left side during the procedure as the imaging wasn’t conclusive.
The surgery went very smoothly, I returned home the same day, and was able to begin taking short walks the next day. I was advised not to lift anything over 10 lbs for the next 6 weeks, after which I was free to resume all of my normal activities. I was extremely clear with Dr Takahashi that this meant a return to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and he confirmed that this would be fine.
I decided to be conservative, so I eased back into exercise first by walking, then introducing light exercise bands, and once I felt comfortable, I began testing the waters with light kettlebells. About one month into recovery, I found myself walking the floor of a large trade show carrying a backpack, which worked wonders for the recovery process. Based on that experience, I’d highly recommend walking and light rucking for any recovery protocol.
I returned to BJJ after about 8 weeks, only drilling at first, though I was soon doing light flow-rolls with trusted training partners. Over the next few weeks, I began to gradually increase the intensity of my rolls, and was soon almost back up to my previous intensity. At around 16 weeks in, I decided to check out a self-defense class my academy was offering, which involved some light Muay Thai. All went well, though I likely overexerted a bit. I went for a check-in with my surgeon, and a physical exam and CT scan showed that all was healing well, so I returned to Jiu Jitsu a few days later.
At my next class, I found myself rolling with a brown belt and even though we discussed doing only a light flow-roll, he went much harder than I was expecting. Midway through the roll, I felt stabbing pains in my abdomen. Out of an abundance of caution, I put my membership on hold and decided to let my body rest. I found myself walking around feeling as though I had a rock buried in my abdominal muscles near the repair site, so I was quite concerned. Resting proved to be a solid strategy. I spent a lot of time stretching, walking, icing, and even using a steam room and sauna, all of which seemed to help, which confirmed my suspicion that I was dealing with a muscle strain.
While my discomfort improved, I wasn’t finding myself getting better to the point where I felt comfortable returning to Jiu Jitsu. I remembered that I had been taking creatine and knowing that this can cause muscles to retain water, I decided to discontinue it to see if the expanded muscles could be causing friction which was exacerbating the discomfort. Sure enough, I began feeling significantly better within a couple of days.
A few more weeks went by with only minimal improvement, so I reached out to a teammate who was a physical therapist to get his thoughts. After some questions over text, he theorized that I could have strained my iliopsoas and prescribed some stretches. He told me that if the stretches help within a few days, his suspicion is probably correct. Sure enough, I began to feel much better from those stretches, and began to incorporate them everyday throughout the day. I coupled this with lots of walking, icing, and light mobility work. I began to see some hope.
It was at this point that I got connected with Dr Jeff Rosenberg, who aside from being an incredibly talented chiropractor, is also a Renzo Gracie Purple Belt and has worked on my instructors from A-Force BJJ. He recommended a combination of Active Release Therapy to work on releasing the iliopsoas and Graston Technique to relieve the scar tissue. He told me that I’d know within two to three sessions whether or not it would work. Sure enough, I felt vastly better after just the first session.
Between my work with Dr Jeff Rosenberg, the stretching prescribed by my teammate, and the icing, I’m feeling better every day and hoping for a return to BJJ within the next few weeks. I plan to only drill, though I may do some light flow-rolls with trusted partners as I slowly increase the intensity of my rolls.
In another post, I’ll be laying out my recovery plan and will go into some more detail about my recovery journey. In short, I’ve learned to take the advice of the medical community with a grain of salt. Surgeons will give very basic “cookie cutter” recovery advice, but it’s only very general and only applies to people who don’t practice any strenuous sports. For those of us who enjoy combat sports or any other intense physical activity, it’s important to have a specific recovery plan to restore mobility, flexibility, core strength, and rotational strength. In my opinion, this is a huge shortcoming of the American medical system. Everything is so compartmentalized that it’s nearly impossible to achieve any semblance of collaboration between medical professionals to enable the patient to adequately address issues specific to their situation. I could have recovered much more quickly had I been provided sufficient advice and guidance. I hope that by sharing my experience here, I can help others to recover from their surgery more quickly and more easily than I did.