Breast Implant Illness

My Battle with Breast Implant Illness

Happy Galentine’s Day to all of you! Today is also Breast Implant Illness Awareness Day and I found it appropriate to share my story on a day like today because I am honoring all my fellow survivors of this illness, honoring them for their support and courage for sharing their stories, which led me to believe that all the symptoms that I have been experiencing for years, were not in my head. They were real and frightening and debilitating and worse of all, undiagnosed. I was carrying poisonous bags in me, for years.
 
Years ago, I decided to change my body and hoping to change my life, I wanted to enhance my saggy breasts. Recently divorced, I walked in for a consultation to get a lift. I was talked into getting implants and did not do any research. I was assured that the pair that I was getting were “safer”. I was in a hurry, did not know better, did not do research and the term “explant” was not of my knowledge. I got them and my life completely changed. Not for the better.
 
Within the same year, I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. My hair was falling off in chunks and my skin was dramatically changing. Looking back, they NEVER gave me a sense of self-love. They were just getting on the way of my moves, my workouts and more importantly, my health. Three years after implanting, I developed the craziest type of “allergy” and was later diagnosed with Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria. I would break out in hives EVERYWHERE and for no known reason. They are harmful. Not because they are silicone or saline but because they are a foreign object in the body. Back to the hives, I was constantly taking pills to fight them. Went to doctors, allergists, several ER visits, emergency clinics and no diagnosis was given. For 7 years, I suffered from this rare skin condition and inflammation!
 
There was no telling and all I could do was take pills. Sometimes I was given shots of prednisone, which is a steroid and not good for long term treatment, so the side effects were sometimes worse than the symptoms. All this while trying to function on a regular basis, while going to work and trying to live my life. I was miserable. My diet was limited and all I could do was pray.
I had to completely stop going to the gym. Next thing was the brain fog. I could not think straight, see straight, was in a constant state of lethargy and exhaustion and giving up on the things that I used to enjoy. I developed chronic pain on my shoulders and thought it was the workouts and getting old. I was also terrified of driving at night because I could not see well in the dark.

For some miraculous reason, my last mammogram revealed some “weirdness” that ended in a recommendation for removal of the implants. I jumped on that train so quickly!! Removal because whatever weirdness was showing, was going to be undetected until the implants were removed. Short story: they were both leaking, one was flipped and the pathology from both came back negative from anything harmful. Praising God!!!

Happy to report that I took the last allergy pill on the night before of explant. I am 7 weeks post-explant and my health is at is best. My skin is shining, my hair is growing, I can make full sentences without forgetting what I was talking about and the best part: the hives are GONE.
I wish to stress on how important it is to do research on this topic.  Explanting is not a trend. Explanting is a method that more and more people are using to get their lives back. Please, if anything you can take from this post is my wish that you think about this thoroughly before making any kind of decision to surgically alter your body or put in an object that will chemically alter the way your body functions, please, please, please, do some research and always look for more than one source. Most surgeons, although skilled, make money on the implants that they put on you.

For any human out there looking at getting breast implants, because you think they will give you so much…please look at #BII and become aware of how much they could take from you in the process. Nothing external will fulfill you internally. N.O.T.H.I.N.G.

 

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