In the End, Coming to the Clinic Is the Start

They listed three things that had worried them while deciding: the cost, complications after surgery, and management during the recovery period.

All three are items I hear often in the consulting room. Of these, complications and management are laid out in advance at the consultation stage. There is a predictable course — swelling and bruising, the period of compression-garment wear — and we distinguish which signs fall within the normal range and when you should contact the clinic. A great deal of worry comes from not knowing what is normal.

This person wrote that once they went through it, it turned out to be nothing much. But the course of recovery differs from person to person. How long swelling lasts changes with the amount of tissue removed, skin elasticity, and original body type.

About the first visit, they wrote that it was spacious and pleasant, and that what they liked most was having an individual space to rest.

People who come in for gynecomastia often find running into others in a waiting room a burden in itself. The individual spaces exist to reduce that burden. I read it less as a review of the facilities than as saying that simply being able to be alone was a relief.

They also noted that the staff and medical team's attitude — that there was no need to worry — became trust. For us it is surgery we perform daily; for the patient it is a once-only operation. When we explain, we try not to forget that gap.

In the box about a moment that stayed with them from the surgery, this was written: that just before the operation, the thought of something going wrong circled in their head and they were tense, and that in that state the anesthesia took hold and the surgery was over before they knew it.

Almost everyone experiences that tension just before surgery. Anesthesiology confirms the patient's condition and administers anesthesia, and I enter the room afterward. So a patient's memory generally cuts off just before anesthesia and picks up again in recovery. The explanation of the result is given separately once the operation is finished.

The box my eyes lingered on longest was the one for what they wanted to do after surgery. Clothes they could not wear and things they could not do because it was always on their mind; now that the thing that had worn them down their whole life was gone, they wrote, they wanted to exercise, wear what they like, and carry themselves with more confidence.

Gynecomastia is not a painful condition, so it does not show from the outside. Instead it leaves small traces throughout daily life — the standard by which clothes are chosen, posture, the way one relates to people. Getting those items back one at a time takes a little more time even after surgery. The body and the habits recover at different speeds.

The words they left for others with the same concern are the title of this piece. Behind it was a sentence about life changing and its quality changing.

This is what they said about their own experience. In gynecomastia, judgments about surgical method and necessity change with grade and the state of the glandular tissue, so results cannot be the same for everyone either. Whether to have surgery is something to decide after confirming your own condition through an examination.

But with the first part — that coming to the clinic is the start — I agree. Having an examination and deciding on surgery are different things, and there are people who, after reviewing their test results, decide not to have surgery. Either way, it is better to confirm before deciding.

In the last box they left the wish that things go well for us for a long time. We will hold to the same standards for the next operation, so as to be worth those words.