I often hear about throwing out the compression garment after surgery. For this person, though, the order was a little different. They had been wearing a compression garment before the surgery — not a medical one, but everyday clothing worn to press the chest down and conceal it. In the review they wrote: "I'm wearing clothes I couldn't wear before, and I threw out the compression garments I used to wear, which feels good."
Their pre-operative worries were the recovery period and revision surgery. Revision comes up in generally two situations: when glandular tissue is left behind and becomes palpable again over time, and conversely when too much is removed and the area looks hollow. So at the examination we first confirm the amount of tissue, the proportion of fat, and how much the skin has stretched, and then decide where to set the thickness we leave. Many people are not symmetrical to begin with, so we do not treat both sides by a single standard either.
As for the recovery period, if you keep to the early compression-garment wear and the activity restrictions, it generally proceeds on the planned schedule. Swelling and bruising may actually look more pronounced for a few days before fading, and people return relatively early to sedentary daily life. Activities that use the upper body heavily and lifting with effort have to wait. The timing differs from person to person, so we set it at a visit after looking at the wound.
Of the clinic, they said, "Male staff guided me, so I could come and go without embarrassment." I hear this fairly often in gynecomastia care. It means the coming and going is more of a burden than the care itself. Of the medical team, they wrote that perhaps because they have seen many patients, they treated it as routine, which was a relief. Gynecomastia is an operation we perform frequently, and we simply did the usual thing the usual way — but if that felt like a relief, I am glad.
To others with the same concern, they left the words "worry only grows the longer you do it." They also said that coming to the clinic would change your mind — but that is what this person experienced. Whether to have surgery is something to decide after confirming your own condition at an examination. In the box for what they would like from us, they wrote only that there was nothing. That is an easy answer for us, but it leaves that much more to ask next time. I hope you never have to buy those compression garments again.
