severe , persistant scrotal swelling after inguinal hernia surgery

I had a double open surgery two days ago, I am on the third day and even with stool softeners have not been able to have a movement. Even pushing out the smallest amounts of gas are killing me. I expected my sack to grow to softball size, but my lower back has also puffed up huge and I have gained over 10 pounds total since the surgery! Did anyone else get back swelling and gain weight like this? I plan to take Milk of Mag... today and hope that helps...but I will not lie...I am scared of the pain. Any advice would be appreciated, I plan to stop taking the Prednisone as I fear it is causing all the swelling and maybe trying something else. Advice?

I meant oxycodone (percacet) above not prednisone...sorry.

My husband had open bilateral inguinal hernia surgery last week. He had the same problems as so many here are mentioning. Not being able to urinate, fever, intense & disabling pain & swelling. When we went back to have the catheter removed, the nurse said that any time the inguinal canal is opened, it can cause these problems and that it is totally normal. BUT ... imho they should have said something before instead of letting us discover this by ourselves on w/e when there is no professional office open for advice. A friend in a local office also told us that there is some kind of "medical brief" underwear that some doctors give their patients to relieve these symptoms. These briefs have some kind of pocket sewn into them and hold small ice packs so the the men don't have to stay in bed to get ice treatments. Since moving around after surgery is so essential to prevent additional problems, imho I think they are actually endangering the health of the men they treat by not at least telling us where we can obtain these garments. So, this is what we can expect after inguinal hernia surgery and the doctors who preform these treatments. THIS IS SO NOT RIGHT!

hey its been 3 days since i had 3 hernias repaired 2 in the grouin and one in the stomach iam 21 years old and have been in a little pain but have been able to sit up .. lie down and do some walking, the pain seems to be coming from the cut as where they opened me up . its not really that painfull iam slowly reducing the meds one by one have to go back to the dr in a couple of days hoping its going to be all good to drive and resume some normal activities . try not to stay in the same spot for too long get up walk around .. sit up lie down keep moving .. it helps i know its painfull but do it a little today and more tomorrow . anyways good luck with your recovery everyone is different soo take it slow..

I had hernia surgery, on both sides, 4 days ago and experiencing very little discomfort except for tonight. I woke up in a sweat for the first time and my testicles felt like it was overheating.So i got a little worried and started googling on my iphone like crazy. When i sleep on my side, i have to tuck my package to the front and it has some weight to it thanks to the basketball size swelling that have occurred, so i was wondering whether my legs are cutting off any sort of circulation to my testicle area causing it to start baking or if it's a normal post surgery symptom. I'm aware of most symptoms just not the hot testicle part...

I had the surgery 2 days agho, some black and blue bruising on the side I had the hernia repaired. Also some lower back pain, stinging around the stiches. Massive swelling of the vas deferens (or spermduct), but as it says in my 'what to expect after' leaflet, this is all to be expected for a week or two. Although any 'basketball' size swelling, as one of you guys, I'm guessing exaggeratively put it, should definitely be seen as not normal and rushed to hospital£m but all the blueness and pain, I mean you did get right next to ur nuts sliced open, clamped and hoked about with, then stiches and all this is to be expected.

I had this operation 5 years ago & also had the swollen testicle, the swelling eventually went down but my testicle never returned to it's normal position & now hangs about an inch & a half lower than my other one, ( my wife finds this very amusing :$ ). After the operation it took a few months before I could do any running or fast walking without discomfort. 5 years on & I'm still having problems, the area around the hernia can still be very tender to touch, especially if I need the toilet. I dare not go back incase they want to go in & take a look, I figure they did enough damage last time. maybe I have just been unlucky? :'(

i had my inguinal operation 40 days ago and until now my right testicle is hard but not that so big compared to my left..Below the cut is still numb and painfull if touched and at the top of it i can feel some muscles or veins which is swollen..I dont know if i mess it up cause i work on 17th day since my operation which includes lifting for 10.5 hrs every day..I just hope i'll be fine..

I had surgery 5 days ago. They took out my prostrate (cancer) and also fixed a hernia on my right side. The day after surgery, my entire scrotom began swelling and is now the size of a large cantelope ( bi-lateral scrotom swelling with imbedded penis) I have urinated on my own now but I have to go looking for my penis. I saw a doctor at the urology clinic on Monday ( 3 days post surgery) and she tells me this is normal and not to worry. i'm the one who has to go on a penis hunt to urinate and I am worried. I can't take being like this much longer. I will return to the doctor tomorrow. My operation was all done by robotics. If it wasn't for this scrotom swelling, I could be walking around the bock.

I too am having to find the end of my penis in an attempt to urinate. So I can certainly appreciate your situation. I had my surgery Wednesday 22nd and I can tell you that my surgeon did not prepare me for what was to come. I suspect this is primarily due to the fact that this operation is somewhat an elective surgery, especially if you have a small hernia, as was my case, and I figure he didn't want to scare me away. However, my experience is quite different from any other I have read about here and I am hoping to get some input from anyone who may can relate to it and also let others know that sometimes you need to follow your instincts regardless of what a doctor may say.

I had Open left inguinal hernia surgery w/ patch under general anesthesia along with local anesthesia and the surgery lasted about an 1 1/2 hours. Upon waking from surgery I was in a fair amount of pain, which as I understand it is somewhat unusual since they had given me a local anesthesia, so they had to administer three injections of pain medication over a period of time to get it under control. I don't know what the volume of these were but I suspect it was small doses for cautionary reasons. After about another 2 hours I was released and around 2:00pm my wife drove me home and helped me to bed. Once home within 2 hours I was in intense pain again so I took 1 of the 5mg/325mg percocet that was prescribed by the surgeon which helped a little. Around 5pm I had to urinate so my wife helped me to a standing position (I tried lying down but couldn't) where I got couple of drops to come out, but no more. At about 7:00pm the sensation to urinate was getting very bad so with my wife assistance I once again got into a standing position to try and urinate but when I went to reach for my penis I noticed a huge amount of swelling around and under the area of my 6" long incision as well as blood slightly weeping from the staples and incision site. My wife and I both agreed that this did not seem normal so I placed a call to the surgeons

I had severe pain and swelling at incision and left testis. I could not stand or walk even after 18 days of Hernia in lingual mesh surgery. I took second opinion but no results. My surgeon advised to use scrotal support (Available in all medical stores) which worked like a magic and I could stand and walk immediately. 8-| . But swelling continued further. I contacted my Ayurved Dr. Divakar MD(Ayu)at Nasik, Maharashtra, who has given me few ayurwedic tablets for swelling. I got results within a weak. But I took this medicine for three weak.
After fourth weak I could live normal life but with precaution. After four months now I am normal but sometimes there is a pain at the site if exertion occurs. But we have to take care of the site for whole life as it has some injury. The site cannot be as exactly same as before. But we can manage and work. No Problem. I think using Scrotal support immediately after surgery is must and will help a lot.And take Ayurvedic medicine.

I had the laprascopic on the right side along with a umbilical hernia at the same time now I have a bubble half way tube and am concerned have a doctors app this week also I have already epidenamitis when i was 16 hopefully it has not come back and is just fluid like everyone else has mentioned but i have no swelling of the testical will keep posted after doc app

This is not a reply to any particular posting, but rather a description of my experience,...

I am a 68 yr old male who had a right inguinal hernia repaired 9 days ago using standard open surgery w/ mesh, out-patient. The hernia was diagnosed some 30 years ago but never bothered me until recently. I mention this, as the Doctor had to cut through lots of scar tissue due to the age of hernia. Upon initial physical exam prior to surgery, the Doctor classified my hernia as a classic "garden variety" inguinal hernia and told me to expect very few problems after surgery.

Compared to many of the posts I have read on this site, I guess I've fared rather well, post op. I did have lots of pain the 1st night after surgery as the Hydrocodone made me throw up, so I only took Tylenol which didn't help much. But the day after surgery I felt pretty good.

The main thing I wanted to mention is the swelling and bruising of my testicles and penis, which started 2 days after surgery and lasted 5 days. I never saw my penis this large in diameter before and so shiny it looks like it could have burst ! This was accompanied by waves of pain lasting from 1 to 2.5 hours. The pain felt like lots of hot itching needles poking - very sensitive & painful - primarily in the testicles, causing me to stay motionless in bed. and using lots of ice packs, 20 min on and 20 min off, I also found it helpful to lay a wet napkin over my "package" and dab with an ice cube. Later I found that I should have been taking 400 mg of Advil every 6 hours (for inflammation) rather than Tylenol (for pain).

I saw the surgeon yesterday (day 8) and he said he was surprised that I was having this much trouble, which is why I googled for this site.

So, it appears from my experience and that of others posted here, that swelling, bruising and pain of the genital area can occur and can last for days to weeks.

I hope my post helps someone, as I found this site to be very helpful to me to know that my experience wasn't all that uncommon.

I will post a progress report in a week.

As I posted a while back. I had the hernia surgery along with prostrate removal. It took over 4 weeks for the swelling (scrotom) to go down and I still have a little left. Mine was all robotics and the incision under my belly button will still not allow me to wear regular pants with a belt because of tenderness there. I have to rely on large jogging pants for comfort.

I just wanted to add my experiences to all the other interesting comments on post-inguinal hernia surgery. I am 68 years old and this was my first experience of a hernia. I had to wait exactly 2 months for surgery, the hernia bulge appeared on Sept. 8 and the operation just took place on Nov. 8. I experienced a fair bit of pain in the area, especially in the last 3 weeks before the operation. I am now in day 5 of recovery. About 36 hours after surgery and in the space of only 5-10 minutes my penis swelled up in bumpy patches to about 3 times its normal non-erection size. There was first a good deal of red sub-cutaneous colour and then dark purple on the underside. There was absolutely no discomfort. As my wife commented, it was "gross". Noone else seems to have mentioned this problem, only scrotal swelling. I got a bit of the latter the next day, with a black skin colouration on the bottom of the area. There was then no change for 48 hours, and urination was normal and not painful. When I awoke today, Nov. 13, the swelling had nearly completely disappeared, leaving just some red blotches on the penile shaft. The worst would appear to be behind me though of course I will carefully monitir the situation.
Has anyone else experienced severe swelling of the penis itself?