Mammogram after a BMX? ...okay,then.

I suggested that or MRIs, as my insurance covers both for high risk BC patients but, for some reason, got a whole mess of pushback from the doctor in the high risk department.

She seems dead set on mammograms, which are a physical impossibility.

Chatted in person with my PS today and they're going to call down to Radiology and up to the high risk doctor and explain exactly why this can't be done, so that should help.

Yeah, I had a followup appointment with my PS this morning and one of the first things she asked was if I was actually serious that I'd been told I had to have a mammogram.

I told her I was, we discussed it, and determined what I already knew:

1) Nipple grafts are not (and will never be) stretchy like a nipple still attached to the pedicle, thus making a mammogram a physical impossibility for me. They'll have to order an ultrasound or an MRI if they feel it's that high of a risk (and whether I do that or not depends on whether my insurance company will pay for it).

2) Less than 4 months from surgery, it would be dangerous to the graft integrity if someone were to pull/yank at them to try and force them to stretch; I'd run the risk of damaging the graft or even tearing it.

She told me to cancel that appointment, then let the high risk doctor know why and said if I got any pushback or the doctor had further questions about it, that they were to contact the PS' office to discuss it further, but under no circumstances was I to let them try and stretch my unstretchable nipples into a mammogram plate, especially less than 4 months out from the graft being done.

SO FAR no pushback. I stopped by radiology on my way out to cancel and explained why both to the appointment coordinator (who left notes) and they went and got a radiology tech so I could explain it to them as well. I even stepped around the corner to show her just how little 'stretch' they have (like, if you pinch the nipple nothing moves, really, and even a super gentle tug clearly shows that there is no stretch to them anymore) and told her that wouldn't change as they're grafts, the pedicle is gone, and they're flatly and firmly attached directly to the surrounding skin.
She said she was pretty sure they didn't have equipment that could mammogram that--no wands, aside from ultrasound and she wasn't sure if insurance would cover that, or anything--and thanked me for canceling rather than trying something I knew wouldn't be possible and taking an appointment time that someone else could have better used.

Haven't heard back from the high risk doctor yet; last message I got was that her receptionist "passed the information along".

She kind of makes me head tilt a bit, because she knows they're grafts; we had a follow up last week to go over the pathology report and she looked them over to see how everything was healing. She's seen them AND touched them.

Honestly, I chalk it up to it being a non-routine way of "nipple sparing"; my breasts were too large to do a typical nipple sparing mastectomy and trying to do so would have left me with a lot of extra skin and a "permanently perky" look along with quite a lot of skin folds around the nipple itself where they'd have to tuck in the extra skin, which I didn't want.
I'm fairly certain she's never come across nipple grafts before as they're not all that common in mastectomies done to prevent breast cancer, and her entire focus is with high risk breast cancer patients, but dang, if she'd just have listened to what I tried to tell her no less than three times, there wouldn't be any of this silliness!

I'm not angry or even really all that frustrated about it all, it's just kind of ridiculous and a little funny to me.

I do understand where high risk is coming from, because nipples are still technically breast tissue, but man, are they being dim about it.

I did briefly consider getting a pair of silicone breasts to take in with a, "Okay, here are my breasts, go ahead and mammogram them!" but I'm pretty sure radiology wouldn't appreciate that.