Living (and coping) with pectus excavatum, a rare deformity you probably haven't heard of

& the operation that left me with chronic pain and permanent nerve damage

At the ripe old age of 14, I spent a fair amount of evenings in my mom’s room, sitting on her bed, expressing my deep frustrations to her about the way I looked and the way I was perceived by other people. My mother would often look me in the eyes, grab me by the chin, and say something along the lines of, “you’re already such a handsome guy.”

It didn’t matter what she said. It didn’t change the fact that I spent most of my childhood socially isolated, often in tears and having panic attacks based solely on my physical appearance. I would often be so stricken with anxiety that I’d be totally emotionally and mentally drained before lunch.

Throughout my childhood, not a day passed that I didn't tell myself how ugly I looked and that I was somehow therefore unlovable. Anytime anyone looked at me, I’d tell myself, “they’re staring at me because of how different I look,” or, “people won’t take their eyes off the circus freak.” Forget about eye contact. I just wanted to be invisible. The ugliness I felt deeply affected all areas of my life.

These feelings were valid yet unfortunate. The truth is I did look different. Very different. I still look different. I always will. I have a condition called pectus excavatum, which, to explain in the simplest of terms, is a deformity where your ribcage caves in. There are different severities of this condition—some minor enough which weightlifting can correct (and other cases so severe that the individual’s organs cannot function properly).

My condition was somewhere in-between. it wasn’t so severe that it was affecting my physical health but it was severe enough that lifting weights wasn’t going to fix the situation. Although it wasn’t affecting my physical health, it was clearly affecting my mental health (which, in turn, can actually end up affecting your physical health). I also wasn’t born with this condition. It’s something I grew into and became noticeable around the age of 6.

So what did I do about it? I hated the way I looked so much that my mother and I followed through with an extremely intense cosmetic operation at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto around the age of 15 called the Nuss Procedure (I believe); a 5-hour operation which was botched and unfortunately worsened my entire state of being from that moment on.

The operation was unsuccessful. Not only did it worsen the condition and make it more noticeable, but the iron rod that was placed inside of me started to poke through my ribcage, tearing through my skin and rubbing against my heart, leading to an emergency operation to remove the rod earlier than planned. I was also left with scar tissue so large that I had to have multiple scar revision operations in the following years.

Worst of all, I’ve been left with permanent nerve damage and severe chronic pain in my chest since the age of 15; since the original operation.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because it’s relative to my previous post about my struggles with substance abuse throughout adulthood. I’ve been living with this botched operation for most of my life, still feeling and looking different, but now with chronic pain and permanent nerve damage.

You can imagine why I turned to drugs at such a young age. The drugs were an escape from the constant reminder of how different I looked and felt. You may not fully understand unless you’ve got some sort of deformity yourself. It can make you crazy, especially in your formative years.

This is not meant to be a depressing or negative post, though. If anything, it’s a positive one. Over time, I’ve learned to accept the things about myself that make me different, as everyone has something about them that makes them different. Everybody has insecurities. But only few overcome them. This is an insecurity that I’ve (mostly) overcome. I still have bad days every now and then.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for quite some time, yet I kept procrastinating because this is a difficult topic for me to discuss so openly with the entire internet. Ultimately, I believe it’s important to discuss these things openly. There are a lot of guys out there who struggle with body image issues and most of them don’t talk about it because guys are trained not to speak about certain things. I, however, am untrainable.

I considered adding post-op photos from when I was 15, but I don’t know where to find photos from my childhood anymore. I also considered adding current shirtless photos to show what the condition looks like now after lifting weights for nearly a decade. But I decided not to because this post is already vulnerable enough. Those who think I post a lot of thirst traps (I do) may not realize I never post shirtless photos (except for maybe 2 times with the right lighting and angles). I may or may not edit this post someday with some photos, who knows.

Dating and maintaining relationships have also been difficult for me. Partly because of my chest. Partly because of my history of substance abuse. But largely because I’ve become so socially independent in the sense that I don’t feel the same urgency in finding a partner as other people do. Hopefully that changes someday though.

There’s one other major component that led to my substance abuse. But let’s save it for the next post (and then I’m moving on from these topics altogether). That’s all for now. Leave a comment. I’ll reply to everyone.

Love always,
George