I mean, essentially it is. In nine days I will be born again, free to enjoy life like every other person. It's a shame that it cost me $11,000AUD (about $7,5000 for you American folk) to get this off my chest, but it's taken so much from me and it would be a shame to let it take any more.
I've been lurking around here for some time now, I only registered a few months ago but never got around to making my big initial introductory post and if I don't make it now I never will.
It feels like an AA meeting
. I'm 19, from Australia and I have suffered from Gynecomastia for 10 years now. My first memory is of course an incident of shame, and it occurred in grade four swimming practice, when I was 9.
Throughout primary school and high school I was always a little overweight, a chubby kid but I had good friends and was quite popular and I never really had many incidents where my gyno caused me trouble, I hid it very well despite having fairly large breasts and nipples. However hiding it meant always wearing a jumper or just not going outside, I wore my school jumper even in the sweltering Australian summers but I got away with it with snappy humor and wit.
In grade 10 I learned about Klinefelter's syndrome and it's symptoms in biology. Being a late (LAATE) developer this troubled me greatly, especially the breasts part. At that age I used to ask my mother, crying some times, about why I was the way I was, of course she never saw the full fury that was my chest, but she knew i was chubby and prepubescent. She insisted that my whole family were late developers and that I was fine.
I finished high school, started University and over my first year, puberty hit me in FULL FORCE and the majority over a 6 month period. I grew tall, lost all my weight, got hairy legs, arms and all those other great places - luckily I'm still not
that hairy.
So I emerged happy and surprisingly handsome, yet being fairly slim and about 70 KG at that stage I still had these breasts!
I began starving myself at the beginning of this year to get rid of them and now have an "eating disorder", much of my life is spent worrying about calories and what I put in my mouth. However people just don't understand that when you spend all night praying to god that you will be skinny and one day get the attention that all the other guys get that its hard to eat, knowing just how easy you could become fat again and be living in hell.
So I'm now pretty out of shape, pretty skinny, 58KG (130 pounds i think) and I have some fat on my chest, but large nipples, a lot of gland and some left over skin.
In June this year I reached my all time low, dropped out of university because i couldn't study with depression, I was going to starve myself to death. Then when my family got so worried they couldn't bare it anymore then came to me and I opened up to them, they understood completely and we went to the GP.
GP Tested me for Klinefelters despite only have one symptom, and tested my testosterone. I was negative for Klinefelters and my testosterone was completely normal. 16 or something.
She sent me to the best (most expensive aswell) cosmetic surgeon in Brisbane for my gyn. The referral date was sept 2008, 4 months from then.
In September he assessed me, scheduled me for a "Bilateral breast reduction, periareolar". He was a nice man, very obvious he was extremely proud of his work and his reputation and I have faith in him. He has all the qualifications of a great surgeon (His name is Dr Scott Ingram, google him if you like
) and my GP even told me he has been doing hand transplants in America! My surgery date was set for July this year.
But I couldn't wait that long, If i were to get it done now, privately it would only cost me $6000 more. Would $6000 be worth 6 months of my life? (Yes I feel like having gyn means I have no life worth living.)
I talked to dad, he agreed with me. He is funding $5000 and I got a $6000 loan. My surgery was reset for 28th January - to my surprise, so close!
So I sit here wondering what I am going to say to Dr Ingram on the 28th, I am fairly skinny, do i tell him to get rid of all the fat to suit the rest of my body? Do I make sure he removes ALL the gyn? Will my nipples collapse if he does?
If my nipples are quite large and he is resizing them but cutting them out like a donut or something, will my scaring be horrible? Will I even be able to take my shirt off comfortably afterwards? I also don't understand how a 3 to 9 o'clock cut under my nipple will make it look normal when there is also excess areola above my nipple :/.
Will he already have a plan? Do I even have a say?
I feel like I should have seen him more, I saw him once at a 45min referral, this is LIFE changing for me, but him him it just seems like something he does every day. Do I talk to him for long when he is lining me and planning? Is that the crunch point?
I'm sorry if this sounded scattered, I'm just typing out what's on my mind.
Thanks for reading guys :]
Oh and Pictures!
I swear they are usually bigger baby, I'm just a lil cold.
Oh and my hair is bad, it's 4 am here.
