I WANT IT NOW! DON'T MAKE ME WAIT!

[hammer]

I have most of you beat in that department, and I know once I wrote that I would be called out on that. I myself have had gyne all my life and at 56 have double D's,! When I said quality of life I meant help me walk , using a wheelchair less, less pain ect.... If you read my story after all these years you will understand what I meant.

[Paa_Paw]

Quality of life. That is a funny phrase to be sure. When I had an ulnar nerve transposition a couple of years ago I was told in advance that I should not expect the numbness and loss of small muscle control in my left hand to improve, the surgery was to prevent the condition from getting worse. So I won the lottery in this regard and the condition is actually slowly improving. This really is a quality of life situation. The stents that restored the circulation in my legs and got me so i could abandon the walker and even take an occasional hike were life changing. I could barely get to the car before but went from that to walking about three miles each evening. That is life changing and truly made a difference in my quality of life. I have some difficulty relating breast reduction to those things.

[hammer]

But, do you leave your shirt on, or not?

[Paa_Paw]

Actually I am less shy about this than my wife is. Last summer I was in camp wearing a shirt that was not buttoned and my sweetheart came over and buttoned up my shirt because I was showing "way too much."

[rhyno18]

The quality of life argument is a slippery slope.  While the symptoms if gynecomastia are physical, the impact is almost 100% mental.  So comparing it to a physical ailment is like comparing apples to snow tires from a quality of life perspective. 

Heck, even among those who have gynecomastia, I'd bet most of of us would define a 'slight case' as anybody who was better off then them. (I'll admit, as somebody who was small c cup I'd roll my eyes at 'I can't tell if this is gyne or not' guy or puffy nipple guy).

But taking a step back, we all realize how much this physical affliction impacts our daily lives.  We obsess and worry about it more than most others notice it.  And it's very hard for people who don't have it to empathize or understand.   It's not a physical ailment.  Or a serious mental health condition- but it does impact the lives of a lot of men.

[Alchemist]

Quality of life.  Mine would be improved tremendously without massive neuropathic pain in my feet.  As I'm trying to heal them they are painful instead of totally numb.  That isn't worth it.  At least I know they are there and where they are at so I can walk.

My quality of life is much improved without congestive heart failure, the shadow of which I lived in for 20 years until finally reversing it.

Having a pair of Ds or DDs (depends on weight and water content) is just of no consequence at all.  I know junior high was hell with them and high school not much better.  The moment I was t-boned by a red light runner at 24 and had 3 fractures in my back plus lots of other damage everything changed and breasts dropped to the bottom of the list and kept on dropping right off as I had so many real problems to deal with.  Now I'm 66, the healthiest I've ever been in my life, having a good time and spend the summer at a nudist resort.  While they are still larger than average a lot of guys have breasts, quite normal, when they are not all hiding and afraid to sit around the pool. 

[hammer]

Rhnyo18, when you can't stand for more then 3-5  min due to pain, or can't walk due to pain, can't due a damn thing for the same reason or can't pickup your child or grandchildren or a gallon of milk because you can't AND YOUR A GUY WHO HAD BREAST ALL YOUR LIFE TOO I think we know what is the quality of life.

Having DDs I know what it means to have breasts, and I would love to have my old healthy body back, and I will walk topless anywhere!

I was just in the VA in a 4 man room and didn't have a top on at all while there!

[rhyno18]

Hammer,

I probably wasn't clear with my point.  I agree with what you're  saying.  There are a whole lot of health issues that impacts that  impact the quality of life more than gynecomastia.  But I think we go down a slippery slope when we use those compare a 'quality of life' comment made on this particular forum.   What's the old saying 'I once complained because I had no shoes, them i  met a man who had no feet'

Hammer there is no question you got dealt a shit hand from a health perspective.  You've gone through a ton.  And it brings perspective to most of us on here who's affliction is primarily cosmetic/mental.  But on a board like this I think it's hard to question someone quality of life statement because given the nature of the board it's assumed the context is in the gynecomastia arena. 

You do give us all a lot to think about and be thankful for.

[hammer]

Rhyno18, thank you!

There is another old saying, " when life hands you a bunch of lemons, you need to make lemon aid"!

I know that guys have problems dealing with the breast and I support them having surgery, but in reality they are, extra fat, breast tissue and skin and I do try to get some to try not to let that control them but them to take control of their lives! In my family, fathers side we have big ears. My youngest grandson was "blessed" with the "family" ears, but we have made them a good laugh over the years not a reason to get surgery!

Yes, I'm a " glass half full" kind of guy, but maybe that has made it possible  for me to accept my body as it is! I always had good self esteem  and self confidence. I also always believed that we must love ourselves before we can love others, and loving ourselves we need to learn to accept ourselves too.

[Alchemist]

Hi Ryno,

The medically important items give a perspective that isn't gained when some body is working from the illusion of physical "perfection" of some ideal type.  At 14 I would have loved to have them removed.  At 20 when I started dating the school nudist club founder they downgraded a lot.  At 24 when my life was changed they totally ceased to matter.  I'm not a teenager any more, in body or mind.  It appears that only 5000-6000 annually in the USA of the estimated 2,000,000-3,000,000 new case of gyne each year

After being in group healthcare for the past few decades and having to evaluate groups for the percentage of dissatisfaction with providers for all reasons including surgeries, reporting on the number of complications such as acquired infections and their costs in damage, kilo-deaths and dollars; medication mistakes in hospital causing kilo-deaths, anesthesia shock killing a friend, botched minor surgery nearly killing my father and the callous incompetent treatment by the doctors and hospital system where it was originally done you couldn't pay me enough to have any unnecessary surgery.  If I was going to do cosmetic surgery I have a whole body's worth that would need doing so I would end up with a patchwork quilt of a skin so that when fully dressed there is the illusion of an "attractive" body. I'm a nudist.  The illusion is gone without clothing.  My body is what it is.  The people that it bothers is their problem, not mine. 

Yes, I had a colonoscopy quite aware of the rate of intestinal perforations and everything else that could go wrong. It saves lives and cuts misery.  From the managed care end of things there are plenty of statistics showing how much more dangerous over-treatment is compared to under-treatment.  I had my gall bladder out 10 years ago.  It took them 2 + hours to intubate me.  The entire surgery took over 5 hours.  Who says nothing ever goes wrong?  And these were truly trivial things going wrong.   They cut me for endoscopic surgery then they had to do it for the traditional surgery too and to show their good will only charged for the more expensive of the procedures instead of two complete sets of charges.  Then they sewed up my belly button at a weird angle and enclosed some hairs in the main incision.   My tonsillectomy wasn't so great either, even for the early 50s time line.

Then my partner had a bikini line incision for an hysterectomy.  When all was said and done there were two incisions a quarter inch apart, the shorter higher one not completed, so the first cut was a clumsy misplacement.  There are hairs also sewn in making it impossible for her to have a non bristly smooth shave job. She is a nudist too, and she has 2 scars for the price of one surgery.  I know that a plastic surgeon such as we have here would never be that clumsy.  I know, we should have warned them that we were nudists and that their work was going to be on display for all to see.  I guess we could get tattoos of "scars by Dr XXXX".  Seriously though, I suppose I just expected that they would perform with the same professional attention to all detail and perfection with which I approach system design and programming.

Expectations are a bitch.  Am I pleased that neither of us had any serious complication or incompetence.  YES!  However, as one sister is a hospital administrator, another a pediatrician, my father a pioneer in the HMO field and consultant, and we all had various degrees of imperfection, mine the most minor, are we cursed as a family or is this what surgeons do when they are being careful for somebody in the business?  How do people not in the business get treated?  My partner's 2 level neck fusion was an example of total perfection fortunately. I worked to find the best in the business.