The Day You Choose a Shirt That Isn't Oversized

Open the closet and you can tell. In the closets of those who've long worried about gynecomastia hang similar clothes. Big clothes, loose clothes, clothes that don't reveal the body's lines.

Not chosen because they were in fashion, but chosen to hide. Today is the story of a man who said he wanted to change that closet.

The man most worried about side effects and pain

What this patient worried about most before surgery were side effects and pain. After surgery he wrote: "I was most worried about side effects and pain, but there was nothing to worry about at all."

But this sentence is his course of recovery. The degree of pain and the process of recovery differ from person to person, and every surgery involves individual variation. What we can do is explain the parts you worry about fully in advance, and watch carefully over the whole process of surgery and recovery. That his worry ended in that one line means, I think, that the process did its part.

Regarding pain, I explain it this way in the consultation. It usually subsides considerably within two or three days, and after that few patients report significant pain. Instead, the compression garment must be worn continuously, and it's admittedly uncomfortable. When I explain that it's a process to press the skin, stretched after surgery, closely against the chest, most people endure it well.

A first impression that wasn't scary despite the scale

When I asked about his first impression of the clinic, this patient said that even though it was a clinic of some scale, it didn't feel scary but comfortable. And he added that he felt the medical team's expertise, which put his mind at ease.

What a clinic should give someone facing surgery is not intimidation but reassurance. About the day of surgery too, he said he felt that there was a system in place from much surgical experience. I believe the time spent repeating the same surgery shows in the atmosphere the patient feels.

"Buy clothes that aren't oversized when shopping"

This is his answer when I asked what he most wanted to do after surgery.

It also means there was a long time when, choosing a size at the clothing store, he chose based not on his body but on his chest. To now be able to choose clothes as clothes. What surgery changes is not only the shape of the chest but these small everyday moments.

I recommend to patients who've finished recovery that they buy a body-fitting shirt and try it on. Summer clothes are thin, so a protruding chest greatly limits what you can wear. When you try on a tight shirt you've never worn before, that's when you feel that you've truly become free from the fear that gynecomastia had been.