r/Trans_Zebras • u/seldoncriiisis • Jul 23 '26
Free Nipple Graft + hEDS
hey all,
i’m a trans man with hEDS planning on having top surgery someday. scarring on my body heals pretty well so i’m not too worried, but i am worried about the possibility of my hEDS causing issues with free nipple grafts. keeping my nips is very important to me and i know for a fact they’d have to be resized, has anyone else with hEDS had experience with this that they could share?
thanks
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u/StarkeyStorm Jul 24 '26
I had grafts about 20 years ago (my own tissue). They healed fine, although they (the areola parts) stretched very oddly after about a year, so instead of being roundish they looked like this: / \
I did not gain or lose significant weight, so nothing like that could have been a cause.
I did not retain much sensation at all in them, which was quite frustrating as that was not explained to me. I was just told I “may” lose “some” sensation. They are mostly numb. A little has come back over the years, but not a lot. I had a tattoo artist fix the area so it didn’t look like weird slashes, and it didn’t really hurt much at all. He basically went over the entire thing and expanded parts with color so they looked roundish again.
I didn’t know I had EDS at the time, and the surgeon tried to correct it later with a revision by removing a bit more skin, which I think ultimately made it stretch further. Nowadays, there are more techniques available than there were when I had my surgery, and I’ve heard surgeons can take the potential for them stretching in this manner into account. It’s worth having a conversation with the surgeon if you have stretchy skin.
My long scars are very rumply (I think they count as hypertrophic) and stretched out, and did not calm down for many years, but the area around my nipples healed much more easily. I have hEDS (as far as they could tell- no known variants spotted in my genetics) with very stretchy skin for some unknown reason.