- Kevin Hicks regained his zest for life after a recent hernia surgery and kidney transplant.
- The football-sized hernia impacted his self-esteem and ability to do woodworking, his passion.
- Post-surgery, Hicks lost 14 inches off his waist, but more importantly, he rediscovered life's vibrancy and joy.
SOUTH JORDAN — Kevin Hicks has a story to tell. A story of rediscovering one's self.
"There's a lot of points to my story that are so amazing and make me so much more grateful for life," he said.
The 58-year-old grandfather was on dialysis and awaiting a kidney transplant with an enormous secondary complication. "The doctor said, 'Kevin, oh my gosh, when you lay down in bed at night, you lay down with a hernia right next to you.'"
The hernia on his right side was the size of a football, significantly impacting his quality of life and his self-esteem.
"You just look at yourself in a different manner," he said. "Hernias don't get smaller; they get larger. And as mine got larger, it became really unsightly."
It even affected his ability to do woodworking, one of his passions.
"It kind of came to the point where it restricted my ability to do a lot of that," he said.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, there are more than 1 million hernia surgeries performed in the U.S. every year. A hernia is when one of your organs pushes through the muscle or tissue that contains it. Symptoms can include pain, discomfort and a bulge in the abdominal wall.
Hicks met with Dr. Jean Botha and Dr. Nickolas Byrge at Intermountain Medical Center.
"When he said, 'We can fix this for you,' both me and my wife, we heard that news together and just emotionally lost it," Hicks said. "It was really like, 'We're going to give you your life back, better than you see it right now.'"
Byrge, division chief of general surgery, said that since hernias won't disappear on their own, they require surgery.
"The goal of surgery is to put all that back in and stitch the hole back up in a way that we prevent recurrence," he said.
Byrge reconstructed Hicks' abdominal wall by rearranging organs, moving and stitching muscles — all while Hicks needed a lifesaving transplant.
"We needed to get his kidney out as he was rejecting it. So to get the kidney out means we had to fix the hernia," Byrge said.
Robotic surgery is one of the advances that has gained widespread use in hernia repairs, though in Hicks' case, it was not used.
"Robotic surgery is a great technique that allows us to do very complex surgery through small incisions," Byrge said. "This has opened up the opportunity to do more complex surgery in the hernia world robotically."
After his surgery, Hicks lost 14 inches around his waist. "I can go buy normal clothes," he said. "I don't have to hide."
He has rediscovered a new love for life.
"It's amazing. The sky has never been so blue. You can hear sounds you couldn't hear before. You immediately have a brighter outlook," he said.
