Any one who has incisional hernia pain...

I'm almost 11 months out and have lost 96lbs. When I went for my 6 month check up I asked my surgeon why I still had pain when I coughed. He examined me and said I had a hernia. He told me to wait until I got under 200 lbs (which I haven't yet) and we could see about getting skin removal along with the repair. But, the past few months the pain has increased. I have a sit down job and work 12 hr shifts. Now, after 6 hrs I start having real bad pain which is usually on my left side just under my rib cage. My stomach pretty much always stays distended and very hard but not always is associated with the pain. Well, I called the bypass nurse and she had me call and make an earlier appt. (instead of my scheduled annual appt.). I saw the new surgeon they have on staff and was not impressed. I left feeling more confused than when I got there. First off, I'm assuming the pain is from the hernia and apparently so did he because he didn't run any additional test. I told him I was sometimes taking 12-15 extra strength tylenol a day for the pain and it wasn't helping. He told me to stop because it was bad for my liver. However, he didn't offer any other type of medication for pain control. He told me he could go ahead and do the surgery or I could wait another 2-3 months and loose some more weight and "kill two birds with one stone" and have the skin removal along with the hernia repair at the same time. He told me to go home and think about it and let him know (I live 2 1/2 hrs away). I would honestly like to wait and see if I could also have the TT but I don't know how much longer I can stand the increasing pain. BTW, I did go to my local ER for the pain before I made this appointment and they did an XRay and determined I didn't have a blockage. I guess what my question is...has anyone had a large incisional hernia, experienced increasing pain and had the pain be something other than the hernia? If the pain is coming from the hernia, I would like to have some kind of pain medication to help aleviate the pain while I try to loose the remaining weight but on the other hand I don't want to ignore or mask the pain if it's coming from somewhere else. Any advise or experience would be greatly appreciated!

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