Zach Darche tried to ignore the pain in his lower abs.
He was no stranger to pain, after all. As a high school junior, he’d torn the labrum in his right shoulder and had surgery at The University of Kansas Health System to repair it. He was finishing out a summer baseball season and training for his senior season of football. He had high hopes of being recruited to play college football, and he really didn’t want anything holding him back.
But unfortunately, the ab pain didn’t go away.
“I used lidocaine patches. I did a whole bunch of stuff just to try to ease the pain,” he says. “But playing football on Friday nights – it was never pain-free.”
To his advantage, Zach had an expert in his own house. His dad, JP Darche, MD, is a sports medicine physician at the health system and a former professional football player, including for the Kansas City Chiefs.
“I think anybody who’s a parent that has kids who play sports, it’s always hard when your kid is hurting and has an injury,” Dr. Darche says. “You’re always hoping that everything’s going to be fine, but it did not go away.”
The Darches met with Scott Mullen, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at the health system. Dr. Mullen diagnosed Zach with a core muscle injury. This is sometimes mistakenly called a sports hernia. A CMI is common among football players like Zach and occurs because the abdominal muscle and thigh muscle pull in opposite directions but are attached at the same spot on the pubic bone. Repetitive motion and force can tear that attachment, causing a core muscle injury.
Dr. Mullen advised Zach to start with conservative treatment. In addition to pain relievers and a steroid injection, Zach headed to the Sports Medicine and Performance Center in Overland Park, Kansas, to work with physical therapist Kyle Veazey, PT, DPT. Veazey explained that in this case Zach didn’t have much risk of doing any further damage during the football season. That meant the goal of physical therapy was to make sure he could feel as close to 100% as possible for each game, knowing there would be pain and soreness afterward.
“Zach had the right approach mentally. He had a really good understanding after his conversations with Dr. Mullen about not causing any more severe of an injury,” Veazey says. “One to 3 days after the game, he was very sore, but he never got discouraged by that.”
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