Truman Customer Story Column
I Wanted to Wear a Light-Colored T-Shirt
When I ask what someone most wants to do once the surgery is behind them, grand answers are rare. What this person wrote in their review was a single line: "Wear a light-colored T-shirt."
For someone who has lived with gynecomastia for years, the color of a shirt is not a trivial matter. Dark colors, a size up, an extra layer underneath. After a few years of choices like that, it starts to look like nothing more than personal taste. That a light-colored T-shirt has become an option again means something that had dropped off the list has come back.
What Worried Them Was ScarringIn the box asking what worried them most while considering surgery, this person wrote: scarring. It comes up often in the consulting room as well.
The incision in gynecomastia surgery follows the border of the areola. Because it sits where skin color naturally changes, it tends to blend into that boundary as healing progresses. How quickly it heals and how much scarring remains, though, varies with constitution, age, the extent of excision, and how the recovery period is managed.
At five weeks after surgery, this person wrote that "the surgical scar is not noticeable." That is their course, and I cannot say everyone will be in the same state at the same point. Scars still have a period ahead in which the color fades, so five weeks is closer to a midpoint than an endpoint.
Pain Differs from Person to PersonAs the moment that stayed with them from the surgery, they wrote: "that there was far less pain than I expected."
This person falls among those who did not feel much pain. But that is their case. Even with the same operation performed the same way, how much pain people feel differs considerably. The amount of glandular tissue to be removed, the extent of excision, and individual sensitivity to pain are all different.
So I do not tell people in advance that "it will not hurt." I think the right thing is to explain that it can hurt and in what order that pain is managed. Nor are those who say it hurt exaggerating. That is genuinely how they felt, and knowing that range in advance helps recovery.
What You Should Take Away from the ConsultationIn the box about their first impression of the clinic, they wrote that the consultation stayed with them, singling out the explanation about health insurance coverage.
Gynecomastia surgery is not a cosmetic procedure; when the diagnostic criteria are met, it is treatment covered by national health insurance. Whether coverage applies, however, is determined after confirming the condition through examination and testing — it is not something that can be settled in advance over the phone. How far that process is explained during the consultation actually influences satisfaction a great deal.
If you are facing the same concern, I think the order of things is to make a place to confirm where your own condition falls, before deciding on surgery.
I hope that this summer you can choose the color you want to wear.
