Inverted nipples more than a health issue

Dear Dr. Gott: Your response to the 22-year-old woman with inverted nipples was uncharacteristically insensitive on your part. It was not the response I expected from the kindly country doctor you are portrayed to be. You brushed her off, suggesting that it’s not an anomaly that people will whisper about across a room and that it will probably correct itself if she should ever become pregnant. Well, I also have inverted nipples, as do some of my sisters and my mother. It did not correct itself when we had children. We were unable to nurse our children on account of it. I am 52 years old, and about five years ago I sought a plastic surgeon to have my inverted nipples corrected. In your defense, he was even more insensitive than you. Before the surgery, he promised me I would be able to “swing tassels” in my husband’s face once my nipples were healed. He laughed when he said it, but his nurse and I did not. When the surgery did not cause my nipples to emerge, he said that I “didn’t want people ogling them” when I walked into a room anyway. This was his solution. I was dissatisfied but too embarrassed to argue with him. I always felt cheated about my nipples as a young woman, and once I became intimate with my husband I was embarrassed to be “different.” When I explained them to him, he told me he thought he’d been doing something wrong, failing to excite me enough to cause them to become erect. My husband left me recently after 22 years of marriage for another woman (undoubtedly with perky nipples), and I am anxious all over again about becoming intimate, and therefore naked, with another man. You should have told that young woman to pursue a plastic surgeon, no matter how embarrassing it is for her, and find out if he/she can help her and what the likelihood of success will be. Believe me, if your penis was inverted, you’d see this in a whole different light. Dear Reader: No question about it. My main thrust was to confirm the fact that inverted nipples are not a health problem. As you so thoroughly pointed out, such a condition can have unpleasant fallout as well as striking cultural overtones. Dear Dr. Gott: You have repeatedly advised readers with high blood pressure to restrict their use of salt in the diet. Are the following substances acceptable? 1. Table salt (NaCl) with a drying agent. 2. Sea salt. 3. A mixture of sodium, potassium and iodide salt. Dear Reader: It’s the sodium (Na) in the salt that should be avoided by hypertensives. Thus, any sodium salt, regardless of origin, is a no-no. Potassium salt (KCl) is an appropriate substitute.