Truman Customer Story Column
To the Man Who Came Carrying the Worry, "What If It Hurts?"
"What if it hurts?"
If you compress the worries of those facing surgery into one sentence, it usually comes to this. Fear of pain, and worry about whether the shape will turn out well. The person in today's story came carrying both.
The words: at first he was embarrassed
This patient said embarrassment came first when he first visited the clinic. But he wrote that as he went through the consultation and experienced the staff's care, the fear disappeared.
Embarrassment and fear are both natural feelings. I think our job is not to tell someone to erase those feelings, but to create an environment in which those feelings naturally fade.
What became of the worry about pain
After the surgery, this patient wrote, "It didn't hurt at all." Of course this is his case, and the degree of pain one feels can differ from person to person. Still, the story that the size of the fear imagined before surgery differs from the size of the actual experience is one we hear not infrequently in the consultation room.
Our surgery is performed under local anesthesia. I inject a local anesthetic around the areola, and the last words the patient hears are, "This will sting, please bear with just this part." The surgery itself, too, is much shortened through years of know-how, finishing in about thirty minutes. It's a part I've kept refining because I believe the shorter the operation, the safer it is for the patient.
Post-surgery pain, too, usually subsides considerably within two or three days, and after that few patients report significant pain. Of course, there are individual differences in what one feels.
He also answered that his worry about the shape was well resolved.
The first night after surgery
When I asked what stayed with him after surgery, this patient said it was actually surprising that he slept well and felt no great discomfort. The gap between the tension of having undergone major surgery and a first night more peaceful than expected—that gap seems to have been the most striking thing to him.
"I definitely seem to walk with my shoulders back"
When I asked what had changed after surgery, he answered this way: "Since the surgery, I definitely seem to walk tall, with my shoulders back and with confidence."
The habit of hiding the chest creates posture, and posture creates impression. When that link is undone, many people change from their very gait.
I don't think gynecomastia surgery is only a physical change. For a man to walk with his shoulders back is a posture that appears when he is undiminished and full of confidence. Especially for younger people, that confidence reaches into school, work, and meeting others, so I don't take this part lightly.
If breast tissue is the cause
To others with the same worry, this patient left words to the effect that if breast tissue is the cause, having surgery is worthwhile. This is a thought that came from his experience, and whether your chest is due to breast tissue or to fat is something to judge after confirming through examination and testing.
Just confirming the identity of the worry makes the mind far lighter. I hope you won't worry alone for long but will come in once and talk. I can't promise to solve everything, but most people leave with their questions sorted out. I sincerely want to help.
