Monday 12 September 2005

Pic of the day: Finally, the long awaited topless picture of my breasts. And yes, I really am covered in "warts" (they are not actually warts, but I forgot the latin name).

Boob day

Today I went to the hospital, where I had an appointment at 12:20 (20 minutes past noon). I started early, because I am not familiar with getting there and did not know where and when the buses went. They were easier to find and went more frequently than expected, so I was at the hospital well before the appointed time. I was given a form to be filled in by the surgeon, and waited. And waited.

My neighbor's wife showed up eventually, much to my surprise. (We actually competed for the same doctor, I believe, only I was first.) We talked for a while. She told me that I was not expected to wait for more than an hour past the appointed time, and if I did I would not have to pay. This was news to me. I contacted the receptionist again, who was surprised that I was still waiting. Turns out two patients with later appointments had gone in before me. One of them arrived exactly at her appointed time, which was when the doctor was ready for me, and so she was shooed in, and from then on nobody thought about me. A nurse claimed to have asked for me, but I sat there all the time and waited, not even playing the Nintendo DS which I had brought with me, just to be sure not to miss my call.

Be that as it may, I did not need to pay. And the elderly surgeon was very friendly, starting by wishing me well met again. This was slightly disturbing since I had never seen him before, and since his presence of mind was somewhat vital for my continued survival. Luckily it seems that his professional skills were intact. (By elderly I mean that he definitely looked like he could have retired a few years ago if he had wanted to.) The reason for the confusion seems to be that he had already had some correspondence with my primary doctor back and forth about the case.

The reason I was sent there was that my doctor had squeezed my breasts thoroughly when I came there for the heart incident, and found a lump in my left breast.

***

When I was 13 or so, I started to grow taller, but not by much. My voice deepened, but not by much. I grew body hair in critical places. My hips grew wider, my thighs chubbier, my breasts budded and I started to have weird dreams about boys. This would have been a lot more understandable if I hadn't been male, but I am. Luckily for all involved, my body found this out on its own after a couple years, and continued the transition. (Including my dreams, as some of my older entries divulge.) Yet some changes were done: My hips are still as wide as my shoulders, if not more so (mostly a problem if I try to squeeze through very narrow openings, which doesn't happen every year). And my breast glands are still there, just smaller and without the padding that makes the opposite sex so decorative. (Breasts are mostly made of fat anyway. Without it, they aren't much to write home about.)

***

The surgeon did not even cut me open. He felt my breasts, more gently than the other had, and probed the nearby lymph nodes. Being more familiar with these structures (rather than with the surrounding fat which most men are familiar with), he realized that the lump was simply part of the glandular tissue. Also to aid him he had the blood tests I took two weeks ago. These showed that my prolactin level was higher than normal for a man, but not the other hormones. Since estrogen is the one that promotes breast cancer, my risk is no higher than in other men.

(Actually the old man claimed that it is the variation in the estrogen level that does it, and I suspect he may be right, because women who are frequently pregnant or lactating have a lesser risk of breast cancer. Perhaps women should just take their p-pills for several months in a row instead of inducing artificial menstruation every month. It is not doing them any good, and it is certainly not doing people around them any good. But enough about that.)

The next step is now to find out why I produce more prolactin than other men. Since it has gone on for 33 years, it is a safe bet it does not come from a cancer; but the hospital ordered a scan of my pituitary gland anyway. I won't rush to the head of the queue for that, of course, but they will send me an appointment when they find a free slot. I expect this to take months, but as far as I am concerned they can take a year if they want. I don't see what I gain from it, except to satisfy my scientific curiosity about what has happened in my brain to make me sport barely pubescent boobs.

Reading up on the matter after I got home, I see that excess prolactin may cause impotence and dampen the sex drive in men. Uh oh. I'll want to discuss this with the endocrinologist once get that far. But if that is the case, I'll ask them to give me more of it... Seriously, if this is "dampened", may God have mercy on the rest of the world's males. But let's not go there today. The short of it is: No sign of cancer, and no acute risk detected. Happy happy joy joy!