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From Someone Uneasy at Clinics, to Feeling at Ease in One
From Someone Uneasy at Clinics, to Feeling at Ease in One
There are people for whom the very space of a clinic is uncomfortable.
People whose bodies stiffen from the moment they stand at the door of the exam room, who leave without saying even half of what they wanted to say. For such a person, deciding on surgery takes courage several times greater than for others. Today I share the story of a man who found that courage.
"The more I visited, the more at ease I felt"
This patient wrote his first impression of the clinic this way: "I'm usually uneasy at clinics, but the more I visited, the more at ease I felt."
There are few sentences more gratifying to us than this. For someone uneasy at clinics to feel at ease, a single act of kindness is not enough. It's something possible only when the encounters accumulate—at the consultation, on the day of surgery, and through the follow-up afterward.
For us, surgery is not the end; we care for patients through long-term follow-up. We believe it's very important to give the trust that whenever there's a problem, consulting us can resolve it. So we don't give our best only before surgery; from immediately after, we manage things even more closely. I imagine it was by feeling this that he offered such words.
The words: it was exactly as explained
What this patient worried about before surgery was how the surgery would proceed, and the pain.
After the surgery, he wrote this: "The pain was about the level of muscle soreness (the ache after a workout), just as explained at the start."
What I paid attention to in this sentence is the part "just as explained at the start." The degree of pain can differ from person to person. So rather than dressing things up nicely, we try to tell patients in advance exactly what to expect. When the prior explanation matches the actual experience, the patient's trust makes the entire recovery process easier.
The surgery he had feared, looking back
When I asked about the surgery, he said he had been scared but it turned out to be nothing much.
Fear before surgery is, for the most part, larger than reality. What narrows that gap in advance is explanation, and what confirms it in the end is the surgery itself.
Wearing pretty summer clothes with ease
When I asked what he most wanted to do after surgery, he said he wanted to wear pretty summer clothes with ease.
There must have been a time when, standing before the closet, the clothes he wanted to wear and the clothes he could wear were different. I hope that from this summer, the two become the same.
In the summer season, clothes are thin, so a protruding chest brings many limitations. He must have wanted to show off pretty summer clothes in a way befitting his young age, and it must have been hard to hold back all this time. I recommend to patients that after surgery they buy a body-fitting shirt and try it on at least once. By wearing, after surgery, a tight shirt they had never worn before, I mean for them to feel firsthand that they are now completely free from the fear that gynecomastia had been.
To those who are afraid
This patient left words to the effect that there's nothing to be afraid of. But this is his experience, and whether to have surgery is best decided after confirming your own condition through an examination.
When I asked what we lacked, he wrote that he couldn't find anything, but we won't settle into that. No clinic can be perfect for every patient. Still, we strive to leave nothing wanting for each and every patient, so I hope you won't be afraid and will come visit us once. Someone who was uneasy at clinics leaving at ease—that is what we consider the picture of good care.