Guess what?

[Traveler]

I have Gynecomastia! Part of my acceptance is now I’ve gotta take care of the twins. My wife suggested we book a couples mammogram since it’s been a few years since her last one and since a couple of my family members have been diagnosed with breast cancer it would be prudent for me to get screened. Called our local breast center to schedule and since I was a guy I couldn’t book without out a referral from a GP. They were happy to book my wife though. The stigma of having male breasts lives on. Anyway, found a local GP and booked an appointment for a breast exam. The Doc. was nonplussed and straight forward, asked why I wanted a mammogram, listened to my questions and story of how I got to where I am today. I told him in all my years no doctor had ever diagnosed me with Gynecomastia and would he take a look. He said sure, please disrobe. Took off my shirt and minimizer bra and he goes “yup, you’ve got large female like breasts, I would have never guessed that when I walked in, you can dress now.” I asked him if he’d seen anyone as big as mine and he said “no, not many men come in for breast exams, I usually deal with more serious issues.”
 In the town my wife and I are visiting of 35 to 40,000 people, I have seen lots of men with gyno. I guess either most men don’t care or most doctors don’t even see it because it’s such a small inconvenience compared to other medical issues. Oh yeah, got my referral.

[brock123]

While I would take a bit of offense to the "more serious issues" comment from my GP, as "serious" is in the eye of the beholder, if you have any reservations about an actual mammogram procedure, I can assure you it's nothing to worry about.

The most annoying part of the experience was being squirrelled away from every female in the building like I had the plague or something.  The procedure itself and the tech that performed it were a cake-walk.  I have a pretty good sense of humor about pretty much everything, and that clearly helped with the tech(s), but all you do is take off your shirt, put on a gown (that just gets taken off again - why??) and get your chest smushed up in a machine for like 5 seconds.  I've had a lot of dental work so maybe my pain scale is skewed, but the experience for me was at best a "1" on the pain scale, and that's likely an exaggeration.

Seriously though, the hardest part was being told afterwards to sit in a certain dark place well outside of the view of any other patients because I happened to be male.  I pressed the issue a bit and was told that "women have real problems".  Whatever.

Go into it with the knowledge that you will be considered an invader to a world which you shouldn't belong, and laugh it off once you realize how stupid that perception happens to be

[Traveler]

I do worry a bit. Thanks for your input! It will be an experience to remember and I will share when it happens. 

[MarcoB]

I have to bring this up since there's so much talk here about mammograms.  Mammograms' radiation is a thousand times as much as you get in a chest X-ray, increasing your risk of breast cancer by 2% each time you have it done, and they result in a lot of false positives, producing unnecessary emotional trauma plus invasive and avoidable biopsies.

Instead, go for thermograms.  They are more sensitive, more accurate, less expensive, painless, and cannot cause any harm, even to pregnant or nursing women.

some relevant links I have bookmarked:
https://thetruthaboutcancer.com/mammograms-breast-cancer-test/
https://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/thermograms-safer-accurate-mammograms/
https://www.naturalnews.com/043960_thermograms_breast_cancer_mammograms.html

From the last article linked there:
"Significantly, in the case of breast cancer, thermograms can flag out cancer development five years before mammograms are able to do so.  It does so by showing up the early stages of angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels which is a necessary precursor to tumor formation.  Most breast tumors would have been slowly growing for up to two decades before conventional diagnostic methods can detect them.  And at the earlier stages of development, cancer tumors are relatively easy to stop and reverse."

And:
"[Mammography's] radiation tends to increase breast cancer risk, possibly quite significantly, especially if undertaken annually, as radiation could have cumulative carcinogenic effects.  Also, the physical compression and manipulation of the breasts can cause existent tumors to spread.  The rates of false positives and false negatives are high.  And it may not even be effective at lowering overall breast cancer death rates.

"Mammography is not an acceptable way of screening breasts; the only reason it's tolerated is that it is a major source of steady income for radiologists.  They have come to covet mammography and want no competition from other approaches," said Philip Hoekstra, PhD, a pioneer in thermogram use."

[gmast]

Ialled our local breast center to schedule and since I was a guy I couldn’t book without out a referral from a GP. They were happy to book my wife though. The stigma of having male breasts lives on.

Its not because of stigma, its because of science.  Men only get breast cancer at a rate of less than 1% of the rate of women.  The rate of breast cancer in men with and with gynecomastia is the same.  If you have new lumps growing on your chest, your doctor may do blood tests.  If those do not explain the growth, your doctor could order a mamogram to determine if the growth is due to cancer or boobs.  however, routine mamograms to check for cancer in men is not typically called for, and not covered under most insurance policies.  I am not a medical professional, and this should not be taken as medical advice.

[Traveler]

Thanks for the input. I did tell the breast center that I had a family history of my paternal grandfather passing from breast cancer and my mom had had a mastectomy and I’d had recent breast growth but it didn’t seem to matter.

[aboywithgirls]

My GP made no mention of a breast exam or a mammogram or questioned about any potential BC in my family history.  My endocrinologist, who happens to be female did question and reccomended a breast exam and mammogram. I  also had an ultrasound do to my dense breast tissue.