My advice after my 4th surgery

[Jgunzz]

Hello everyone,

It has been a roller coaster dealing with gynecomastia. I sometimes wonder why me? It's unfair that I've had to deal with this condition since puberty and wish that I had made better decisions in my life. Here is a brief story:

I had gynecomastia since I was 13 years old. I was a lean kid before that, and everyone in my family is pretty lean. However, once I hit puberty, I started exercising less and playing more video games, along with a ton of junk food. I was eating a ton of sugar and drinking lots of soda. By the time I was around 16, I had become a chubby/fat kid. I worked really hard in the gym to try and lose weight and get fit. I had an average case of gynecomastia to the point where I didn't like wearing t-shirts and would mainly wear sweaters to cover the condition. I'm sure many of you know the pain and embarrassment it causes. I had gotten pretty desperate to get in shape which led me to take pro-hormones that I bought from a store that was next to my gym. I now look back and am pissed off that these guys that worked there (who were on steroids) were selling pro-hormones to kids under the age of 18. Anyway, I did a few cycles and put on some muscle mass, but it made my gyno worse.

After a ton of exercising and my life revolving around just trying to get fit enough to feel confident with my shirt off, I decided to have gynecomastia surgery. I must have been around 21 years old when I did. I didn't have a lot of money and looked for a doctor that could do it for a low cost. I found a doctor in Seattle (I won't mention names) and booked the surgery with him. It was a huge mistake. This plastic surgeon did not have much experience with doing these types of surgeries and I wish I knew back then what I know now about selecting your doctor. The first time you have surgery is the most important time because this is when you can get the best results.

Anyway, I went and had surgery and when I woke up I did not have a compression vest on. The doctor mentioned that I didn't need one and that it's not that important. I went home that day and the next day, both of my pecs were swollen big time. They were more swollen than the size of my chest pre-surgery. I was also in a ton of pain and had blood seeping through my left pec. I called the doc, they called me in, and he noticed I had a hematoma on my left pec. I could see the look in his eyes of disappointment, and he literally told me "I'm sorry." After this surgery, my chest was permanently enlarged, although it was shaped differently. Instead of a lump behind my nipple, that area was more flat but overall the volume of my chest had gotten bigger because of the swelling.

We did a revision surgery because I was still unhappy and he went in there and basically did liposuction to try and flatten the chest. I think there was so much scar tissue present that he was just trying to break it up.

Anyway, it got manageable to the point where I could wear some shirts and feel confident. Even though it wasn't what I was hoping, it was manageable. Fast forward 6 years later, and I had gotten pretty lean and in good shape but my chest was still bothering me. When I would wear tight shirts, my entire body looked good but my chest was oversized and out of proportion to the rest of my body.

I decided to look into getting surgery again, this time with an experienced doctor. I found a doctor in New York who is one of the top doctors in the world with these surgeries, and booked through him. I had the surgery done last year, and once the healing had been done, I realized I had 2 slight crater effects in both pecs. There was a really bad crater deformity in my left pec, and a very slight one in my right pec. It was so bad that when I would go to the gym, you could see the craters through my shirt, and this made me feel paranoid that everyone is noticing my abnormal chest. I went an entire year through paranoia and anxiety about my chest, and felt so defeated and dissapointed that I even got the surgery. It didn't look horrible, but me being a perfectionist, I was always looking to look better.

I called the same doctor and he was nice enough to pay for my flight and also pay for the entire revision surgery, and he did some fat grafting. He moved fat from my stomach/love handle area and moved it into the crater area in my chest. I know that results take time to show, so I'm just waiting to see what it will eventually look like now. I do not want to do any more surgeries, so as long as it looks natural now, even if it's not the chest I was hoping for, I am going to just settle.

Here is my advice to anyone that is looking into surgery. The first thing I would say is to get in shape before you even think about surgery. Get into the best possible shape you can, where you can get into single digit body fat percentage. Make sure you have real gyno and not just chest fat. Second, if you do decide on getting the surgery, make sure you choose a top doctor in the country. It is worth it to spend more and travel and see a good doctor than to settle for one that's more convenient. The first time you get the surgery is the most important, as revision surgery is much more complicated due to the presence of scar tissue, and it's much harder to get a good result with revision surgery. Make sure surgery is a last resort. It's much more acceptable to have a fatty chest that looks natural than to have a chest that has irregularties and where people can see that you've had surgery done. If I could go back, I would have gotten extremely lean and in amazing shape, and then gotten the surgery done right the first time. I believe that would have changed the course of my life, versus feeling all the insecurities and depression that I've felt for a very long time.