We wanted to celebrate with this patient who has had 95% relief of her groin pain after a hard three year battle! She finally won! We consider it a privilege to have played a small part in her journey!
I also want to shout out to all of the other doctors that saw her over the years and worked so hard to rule out all the other things that can look similar to her pain. They never gave up.
She had experienced very sharp, stabbing, radiating pain from the left flank and lower quadrant down into her left pubic region. It also occasionally radiated into the inner groin down front of the thigh. This pain was bad enough that even wearing anything with a band around the waste was painful.
It came on suddenly with little warning on a trip. She had many doctor study every organ in her abdomen and pelvis and skeletal structures. It was an astute pain management team that thought of injecting her ilioinguinal and iliohypogastric nerve. She had great temporary relief with these injections. After repeating these several times with no long lasting relief, she was referred to us for possible treatment options that might give her long lasting relief.
After confirming that blockade of the ilioinguinal and iliohypogastric nerve resolved her pain by performing our own injection in the office, we offered a nerve resection to help her with her pain. She is now 6 weeks from this operation and is reporting 95% relief of her severe pain.
The trade off --- removing these small nerves does cause some numbness in the groin in an area about the size of the palm of her hand. After 3 years of severe pain – this is something she was willing to give up! These nerves do not affect the genitals.
We celebrate with her!