A Great Day, and a Philosophical Dilemma.

[Paa_Paw]

A great day indeed, so what is the philosophical dilemma?

The dilemma is that we are often asked to rate someones Gynecomastia or to empathize with the emotional impact of the condition. Sometimes I wonder: Rate Gynecomastia compared to what? For all that I know only too well the impact that it can have on a man; I sometimes ask myself if I have not exaggerated to myself the feelings that I have had.

Why the introspection? Read on----

I have a lovely, blond and blue eyed Granddaughter. She is eighteen and today we got the results of her most recent lab tests, scans and etc. She is just fine. Yet we hold our breath each time she goes in for a new round of tests. Why? At the age of fifteen she had part of her small intestine and a third of her large intestine removed due to cancer.

What we have does impact our lives, no question about it. But sometimes we need to realize that it is in reality nothing more than an embarrassment and one that modern surgical techniques can eliminate.

Sometimes we need to step back and realize that we are so fortunate that we have such a petty problem.

[Pacifico]

So true.  I remember when I owned my coffee shop, I would look out the window and see a lady with no legs or arms in an electric wheel chair.  We often forget how lucky we are when we let our personal problems blind us from reality.

[Jay999]

I used to try and think this, but in reality it really didn't help. I would know there were others much much worse off than I, but it made no difference to what I felt.

[nitro1437]

it only sounds good because thanks to present day surgery/medicine it can be tamed. and at some point fully erased if we are lucky enough. i go in for surgery in 20 days  and i could not be more lucky to have this available to me under my health care coverage.

[Jake]

Amen to that Dan.

[Pacifico]

I used to try and think this, but in reality it really didn't help. I would know there were others much much worse off than I, but it made no difference to what I felt.

The point was not to make myself feel better about gyne.  It would just give me something to be greatfull about.  Millions of people would trade their situation in an istant, to be in our shoes.

[Paa_Paw]

Point of view has a lot to do with how we perceive things.

The late comedian Bob Hope said something years ago which illustrates this point. (Yes, I'm old enough to remember Bob Hope.)

He defined the difference between Major Surgery and Minor Surgery in this way: "Surgery performed on me is major while surgery performed on someone else is minor."

I would hope that I have not given the impression that I was trivializing the woes of anyone. But truly, if the worst of our problems is Gynecomastia, we are indeed fortunate. If we give the matter some thought, I suspect that we could all think of someone who suffers from a much more dire condition.

[headheldhigh01]

i've respectfully disagreed in past and will do so again.  a car injury is recoverable.  death by a thousand paper cuts however is death.  it's like a line or two from that blue oyster cult song:  you see me now a veteran / of a thousand psychic wars / i've been living on the edge so long / where the winds of limbo roar / and i'm young enough to look at / and far too old to see / all the scars are on the inside / and i'm not sure if there's anything left of me. 

comparisons are odious.  you can take a film and play it slow or fast, and the fast looks more intense, but it's still the same number of frames.  don't belittle the slow play. 

[rdy4chng]

It's easy to look at two people and compare circumstances and conclude that one has it better then the other.  What is not easy and is very complex is to see things from another persons perspective.  Pain comes in many different forms, one person may not have legs and will never have the chance to walk again or like many of us here, we have a physiological pain caused gynecomastia of which I don't even need to go into detail about because we all know it very well, regardless of the cause they are both hard to endure and shape our lives. 

It's a good philosophy to be happy for what you have in life and be grateful for all the good things about it.  There is nothing wrong or vein about changing something that we all know can cause so much pain and unhappiness in our life.  I'm grateful that we have modern medicine that can reverse this deformity in men.  I'm looking forward to my surgery and hope to have it very soon and I'm happy for all the men out there that can now enjoy their lives in a different way.