Most men who ring us have been thinking about it for somewhere between eight months and four years. Not researching for four years. Thinking about ringing, for four years. The gap is almost never about the treatment. It is about the appointment.
So here is the appointment, in order, with nothing left out.
Before you arrive
You will have said, in a form or on the phone, roughly what it is about. Roughly is enough. Nobody needs the essay in advance and nobody is going to make you produce it at reception. The word you could not type is a word we use several times a day.
Bring a list of anything you take regularly and anything significant in your medical history. If you cannot remember it all, come anyway and we will work through it together.
The door
This is the part men are actually nervous about, so we will be specific. You are not walking into a waiting room full of people. Appointments are spaced so that you are not overlapping with anyone else’s, the door shuts behind you, and nothing about why you are there is said anywhere except the room you are in.
There is no clipboard on a counter with your reason for visiting written on it. Nobody says your treatment name out loud in an open space. If you would rather arrive at the very start or the very end of the day, say so when you book and we will put you there.
The half hour
- You talk firstWhat you have noticed, how long, what changed and what you have already tried. There is no wrong way to say it and no version we have not heard. Take as long as you need. Men routinely apologise here and it is never necessary.
- We ask the health questionsMedication, conditions, previous procedures, allergies, what else is going on. Some of it will feel unrelated to why you came. It is not. This is the part that decides whether anything we do is safe and sensible for you.
- We explain what is actually possibleIn plain terms, including the option of doing nothing. You get told what the procedure involves, how long it takes, what you will feel, what recovery looks like, and where the limits are. Especially where the limits are.
- You ask everythingThis is the whole point of the half hour. Bring the questions you would not put in an email. Bring the one you have typed into a search bar at two in the morning. Nobody in the room is embarrassed.
- We tell you what it costsThe consultation itself is free. Then the full figure, for the whole thing, before you are asked to decide anything. If there is a follow-up, a top-up or anything optional attached to it, you are told the price of that in the same conversation rather than at the end of the course.
- You leaveThat is genuinely the end of the obligation. Nothing has to be booked on the day, and quite a lot of men do not book on the day.
The awkward part, answered properly
For some of what we do, there is an examination. Not always, and not usually at the first appointment unless it is needed to answer your question honestly.
When there is one: you are told what it involves and why before anything happens, it is as brief as it can be, only what needs to be uncovered is uncovered, and you can stop it at any point without having to justify yourself. You can decline it and still have the conversation. There is a chaperone available and you are entitled to ask for one.
It is a professional five minutes for the person doing it. It is not five minutes they will remember, and it is not a five minutes that gets discussed anywhere afterwards.
Nothing has to be booked on the day, and quite a lot of men do not book on the day.
What a good consultation feels like
You should leave knowing more than you came in with, including things that make the treatment sound less appealing than it did on the website. If everything you heard was encouraging, you did not have a consultation, you had a sales meeting with a chair in it.
You should also leave having heard the word no somewhere, even if it is only no to one part of what you asked about. Not every man who sits down is suitable for what he came in for, and some men are better served by not spending anything with us at all. When that is the case, that is what gets said.
What you leave with
A clear description of what was discussed, the full cost of anything proposed, and written aftercare if you go ahead. No pressure to book on the day, and no follow-up campaign if you do not.
If you are still putting it off
Book the half hour and treat it as information gathering rather than a commitment, because that is what it is. The worst outcome available to you is thirty minutes and a straight answer.