Don't Agonize Over It — Just Come In for a Consultation

This feedback sheet came back unusually short. A few words for each of the six questions, with some boxes left blank. At first I felt a little let down, but reading it again, its brevity was exactly what made it clear.

In the first box, about pre-surgery worries, he had written: "I was worried about after-effects, but there was no real problem with daily life." One sentence. "After-effects" covers a lot of ground. Will sensation change? Will a scar remain? Will I have to take a long time off work? When I ask in the consultation room, the worry inside that word is different for every man. He never spelled out which one weighed on him, but the answer he left afterward was that daily life went on without trouble, which means most of those fears passed him by. Swelling and a pulling sensation are part of recovery for everyone, but it is rarer than people expect for life to come to a halt.

His first impression of the clinic was a friendly atmosphere, and he wrote that the team helped ease his nerves during the procedure. The quieter a patient is, the less likely he is to say out loud that he is nervous. So, up until anesthesia begins, our team tries to tell the patient what stage we are at before he has to ask. I'm glad if that reached him.

His message to men facing the same concern was just as spare: "Don't agonize over it — just come in for a consultation." I'd like to unpack that a little. Coming in for a consultation does not commit you to surgery. How advanced your condition is, what the cost involved is, how long recovery takes — you can simply confirm the things you have been guessing at from internet searches, and then go home. Most of what men agonize over grew large in the absence of information.

Thank you for the short note. I hope his recovery passes just as plainly and uneventfully.

This was this patient's outcome; results and recovery vary from person to person.

- Dr. Jeon Jin-woo, TRUEMAN Gangnam -