I was dx'd in 2003, symptoms since 2000, took lots of meds until Sept 09 when i got off all pd meds, with a struggle.

Last summer I needed to have a hormonal implant that had gone astray in my right upper arm removed. I had two botched attempts to do so in the GP's surgery; in the second he sliced into a vein and i ended up with a rock hard blood clot the size of a golfball in my arm. I abandoned the GP. Then I had to locate a surgeon who would hospitalize me and deal with the problem safely. I had major trouble locating one as i didn't want a general anaesthetic.

Eventually i went to the top plastic surgeon in the country who removed impacted implant and blood clot and tidied things up. He did not want to use a general anaesthetic on an unmedicated pwp, nor a medicated one for that matter. As a plastic surgeon, he is highly skilled at locating nerves so he spent a long time numbing me properly. I didn't feel a thing, unlike the butchery that had gone on with the gp. This surgeon said the main issue is that a general anaesthetic would 'expose' me to to more adrenaline than i could handle and in his opinion adrenaline is the biggest problem pwps face; he referred to it as 'your main problem, y'know'. I got the feeling he disrespects the obsessive focus on the presence or absence of dopamine, abstracted from the broader context of all the neurotransmitters.

This was a complex procedure as the GP had mangled the implant and buried it deeply with his messing around. It was 'like looking for a needle in a haystack'. The clot was also very dodgy. So, I guess it would be worth seeing if you can locate someone who is willing to do the hernia op under local for you. My surgeon may have been exceptional and i already had a lot of confidence in him since he had removed a large tumour off my 3 yr old's face years ago and reconstructed her lip, perfectly.

I've had worse experiences getting my teeth cleaned with numbing at the dentist's.

Best of luck to you.