Fix before it's a problem? Indecisive on inguinal repair via lapro
48yo male with inguinal hernia, my left. 155#, reasonably healthy, weekly+ runner, etc. No prior surgery besides dental. Primary physician had a look and referred me to a surgeon. Saw the surgeon, confirmed hernia on left side, but that I don’t need to fix it now. He could fix it I wanted to, he does laparoscopic. He’d written me down as repairing both sides but while my right seems ok I do hear about people fixing both anyway to avoid being out again later. As for the hernia itself, I don’t recall anything going through it, much less getting stuck/incarcerated. But I get a feeling from it that I don’t get on the right side, just dull pain usually. Little tingles (”a fart went past, lol”). There’s coping things I find myself doing, like pushing on my left side during a poop, or during a bad cough/blowing my nose. Lifting and moving around is usually alright, I run almost 10km a week, my back sucks but that’s another issue.
So apparently it’s not bad enough for anyone to make a call but can be proactively fixed if I want. Kind of the thing where it’s not bad now, but I also know hernias don’t get better by themselves.
This part probably belongs in r/advice but I’ve been unemployed since washing out of an IT job, doing therapy, diagnosis/meds, studying/got a cert, maybe I can get this done & recover during downtime. For all I know next job will be manual labor where it’ll be harder to take a week off and four weeks of no lifting.
I guess I’m just asking opinions if I should go ahead with this thing, if someone held off and it was / not a problem, should I fix the side that’s not having trouble? Thanks for any help I’ve made it this far and not been in surgery or around hospitals much.