Unless you've had surgery, you just wont understand what the recovery process is like. Its a mixture of emotions.
The day after surgery is the most flat your going to see your chest, depending how the surgery has been performed when you take off the bandages youl be left with a smooth chest. This is down to a few things but it comes out un-naturally flat and its a huge change. Its sort of euphoric and you go to bed thinking "well thats sorted then".
A few days pass, you look in the mirror and see some swelling. This is where i first had my doubts
"have i wasted my money?"
"Is it reoccuring?"
Few weeks pass, you're losing sleep due to the vest and the swelling goes and now you can feel scar tissue when you are massaging. That initial euphoria has long gone and your feeling worse than before the surgery. All i can say is there is just a point where your emotions balance out and you accept your chest, and then all of a sudden you notice your chest is now "Normal" and you can carry on living your life. I mean if you look at my thread surgery threads youl see my have doubts and then just realise that im actually gyne free.
Its not a case of personal loss, or how hard your life is. When a part of your body changes overnight your brain just doesnt adjust to it that quickly. Ive seen lads who have been whipping there tops off in three months some take a yaer or so. But you will get there
Thanks for this. You've made me feel a lot better.
I had my surgery this Monday and it's been a whirlwind of emotions since then. I still have heavy dressings under my vest, so it's nearly five days post-op and I haven't been able to look at my chest. For all I know, nothing has even changed under there. I didn't even experience the "unnatural flatness" the day after, because I simply couldn't see.
But I do agree that the emotional/mental aspects after surgery are largely overlooked here. So many people disappear after their surgery, return once a few months later to report that they're now happy, and slide off the forums for good.
After over five years of contemplation, research and saving for surgery, I'd worked myself up for such an instantaneous transformation that it came as a shock when I walked out of the hospital feeling
exactly the same. Of course, rationally I always KNEW that it would take months to heal, but emotionally I expected to feel an epiphany, like the weight had been lifted from my shoulders immediately. This was not the case.
My PS has been helpful in this way. From the beginning he's been very big on managing expectations, thinking things through, adjusting to big things slowly.
I agree that there are worse things in the world than gyne. I understand that some people's experiences with this condition may not have left as much emotional scarring. In fact, I may be young, but I've already experienced much harder and much worse things than having "boobs". But this also doesn't mean my chest isn't still on my mind every waking hour of the day, or that as a young slim guy I don't feel self-conscious walking around with people double-taking when they see my inconsistently prominent chest.
When you're teased, poked, jabbed and laughed at from the age of 9, and still have people glaring at your chest at work 11 years later, it can take a huge emotional toll on you. I feel that years, and many great experiences, have been lost due to this condition. Because of this condition I spent all of my teenage years inside making up excuses, wearing stinking hoodies in hot summer, pretending I didn't know how to swim. I have had eating disorders because of this condition. I have had school trips made miserable because of this condition, because instead of having fun at the beach, I was being laughed at as the skinny boy who had bigger boobs than the fat boys, and even some of the girls. In fact, I copped MORE flack than the fat kids. People
understand "fat", and it's common.
What many people don't expect (I certainly didn't!) was that the process of emotional healing can take as long as, or even longer than, the physical healing. I think for many people, suffering with this condition for almost as long as they can remember can be a huge thing to move on from, even after the "problem" has gone away. I think it's time we all start talking about it a little more.