My Story.

Before Implants and My Decision 

In 2006 I was a manager at an advertising agency and had just competed and placed in 2 figure competitions. I lost a lot of body fat and being around so many women with perfect figures and fake breasts, I started to feel insecure in my new body.  A lot of people around me commented on how thin I had become and how my bra size had shrunk so I made the rash decision to get breast implants.

95% of the fitness girls I know have implants and about half of the girls I know have them or are getting them so I had nothing to question, right? I didn't do a lot of research about the risks because I didn't want to get too scared since nothing bad had happened to anyone I knew. Bigger breasts are not something I have always dreamed of - it just seemed right at the time to do it and nobody told me not to. The FDA and my surgeon said there was nothing to worry about.

The FDA’s possible risks of breast implants were something they "had" to address because all of the women in the 70’s under the Dow Corning lawsuits had claimed implants had made them sick – but they had been proven wrong and were just out to win money.  The symptoms that the FDA hides in warnings and symptoms that my doctor never told me about include:

"autoimmune -like disorders and/or fibromyalgia, in which signs include joint pain and swelling; skin tightness, redness or swelling; swelling of hands and feet; rash; swollen glands or lymph nodes; unusual fatigue; general aching; greater chance of getting colds, viruses and flu; unusual hair loss; memory problems; headaches; muscle weakness or burning; nausea or vomiting; and irritable bowel syndrome."

Not knowing that this could really happen to anyone - I decided to have the surgery on Dec 26th 2006 – 1 day after Christmas.  After the surgery I felt very strange and within only a week I started getting VERY SICK. 

How did wanting to be beautiful become so ugly?

Symptoms & Implant Illness

I was at work and I started getting dizzy and couldn't focus on simple tasks. Everyone said I seemed very depressed and withdrawn.  Most people assured me that it was just part of recovery or anxiety and I would feel like myself in no time. I KNEW something else was wrong – I just kept telling people I didn't feel like myself.  I started losing my memory among other terrible things. Over the course of this illness, my symptoms have included:
  • Very blurry and sometimes crossed and foggy vision
  • Trouble reading or retaining any information
  • Couldn’t drive or walk around my apartment without getting lost
  • Couldn't remember who I was sometimes or who my parents or friends were
  • Nothing was ever familiar and I couldn't recognize my face or name when I saw it or heard it/ This is described as "brain fog"
  • Couldn't figure out how to wash a dish or dry my hair
  • Couldn’t watch TV or listen to music because I felt confused and out of it
  • Didn't understand much of anything people said to me
  • Tingling hands, pain in my body, extreme fatigue, dizziness & the room always spinning
  • Muscle and joint pain in my arms, back and legs
  • Felt like I was falling all the time
  • Extreme anxiety and depression
  • Skin rashes, especially on my chest
  • Hair loss
  • Night disturbances and sweats with extreme thirst and dry eyes
  • Burning, dry itchy skin
  • Tremors, muscle twitching and jerking, body shaking, and heart palpitations 
  • Extreme fatigue
I always felt sick and had several other symptoms that are similar to symptoms people have when they have autoimmune diseases attacking their bodies. Every day was a struggle to live through. I lost my sense of time, I would black out sometimes and everything seemed like a big foggy nightmare. All I could do was cry and hope things got better. I could no longer take care of myself.

I only had implants for FIVE WEEKS before taking them out when I found out via sites like this one that this was the only explanation why someone like me w/ perfect health could become so sick so fast.  I didn’t have any leaks, the silicone shell of the implant was being attacked by my body. After I got them taken out, I got much worse.  I couldn't relate to anyone - I felt like I was going to be paralyzed and dysfunctional for the rest of my life. I lost all hope of ever having a family of my own or having the career I had always dreamed of. I had to be around someone all of the time and I was a mess.

I flew to GA. to have a 2nd surgery to remove any remaining scar tissue to get any remaining chemicals out of my body. After that surgery I had a seizure and was in a coma for 2 days, then the ICU for a week. My family thought that they were going to lose me. The seizure was at the end of February.  I was then hospitalized at USC Medical Center at the end of May where I was hooked up to IV's because I was doing so poorly and was heavily sedated just so I could try to cope with what was happening.  My parents held me morning and night because I was so scared and out of touch with the world.  I couldn't even walk 3 feet to the rest room without being in pain or feeling lost.  I didn't think things would ever look up and nothing the doctors tried helped. 

The Truth & Other Sick Women 

I never knew that something so insignificant and as common as wanting larger breasts could ruin my life.  I have deep regret and every day I just have to hope my life will get better and become more normal.  The FDA says implants are safe because, even though I have lots of connective tissue/ autoimmune disease symptoms, my blood work does not show the exact readings that those diseases usually show so the FDA says there is no proof of these sicknesses. When blood work does show signs of disease in some women, the FDA says they cant prove the link between the implants and the sickness.  They say these women would have gotten the diseases anyways so it is just a coincidence. Do you think it is a coincidence that so many women with implants commit suicide? I don’t. I am sure there are so many sick women out there from implants and their doctors cannot figure out why.  

I have talked to hundreds of women affected by implants - many among who will never work again, are crippled, have lost relationships, not able to take care of themselves or their families, had heart attacks and seizures, brain lesions, organ failures and transplants, been bedridden for months to years and developed tons of various diseases, all in the pursuit of physical perfection.  I have talked to young girls, moms, Playboy models, and just regular people like me.  None of us had known that breast implants could ruin our lives. Some people get sick from the chemicals on the outside of the shell like me, some people have leaks or ruptures and some people get sick from mold that grows from leaking saline. Silicone Poisoning or Human Adjuvant Syndrome - there are a couple of names for it and only a handful of doctors and surgeons who will even openly admit that it exists because of the money they will lose if they do. Plastic Surgeons are one of the wealthiest groups in the world and have major access to lobby government politicians and agencies into not acknowledging the major inherent medical problems silicone and saline breast implants can cause. I cant even imagine how many women out there are sick and still don't realize it is their implants making them sick since it is not talked about in the media yet. I got sick right away too and some women don't get sick until the implants have been in their body for years.

I am not a feminist and am not an older woman whom would have gotten sick eventually either - these are among some of doctors' theories that are both untrue of all of the sick implanted woman out there.  Creating this site is one of the first of many steps I hope to take in telling people about this happening to me. I feel like it is my responsibility now to share this little known info with people - if anything just to put the thought in their head and make them aware. If anyone had told me there was a risk of anything happening, I would NOT have had surgery. 

Saline and silicone implants are incased in a silicone shell and your body CAN attack the implants as a threat to your immune system. 

I hope that you will keep this in mind if you are thinking of making a decision about this and that you share it with anyone else who may be thinking about it.  The benefits do NOT outweigh the risks, in my opinion.  

Looks fade in time, but your health is all you have and when it is gone, like mine has been – you would do anything to go back and rethink your decision. My doctor failed to even tell me that most women have 3 surgeries in their lifetime due to local complications.  Breast implants DON'T last forever and WILL need to be replaced.  I was not aware of this either.  If I had done my research and seen the sites with the warnings and the sick women, I would have never risked my life like I did.  

At first, even though I had pages and pages of internet stories and facts with me to the doctor - none of them believed I was sick from my implants. I was getting worse and I knew in my gut from my own research that I got sick right after implantation and the implants were killing me very quickly.  I felt like a time bomb.  If you think of how your body reacts to the flu - your head hurts, your stomach hurts, you throw up, you have diarrhea, your whole body aches, you have chills and fever. Silicone Poisoning is like the flu a million times magnified. With my urging, my internal medicine doctor finally sent me to neurologists, rheumatologists, endocrinologists, internal and infectious disease doctors, holistic doctors, etc. and even my own plastic surgeon didn't believe I was sick or failed to admit it because when he took them out I had no leakage. 

After Explant & Hope For Recovery 

Well, as I type this - 3 surgeries and months later, I am finally showing signs of improvement.  Many woman do get better, some take up to 2 years, and many women never fully recover. My medical file is about 5 inches thick, I am on a lot of medication and I have a team of about 6 doctors I see at USC now.  They are all fascinated and with this happening to so many women and it is so hard for me to believe how bad the medical community is kept in the dark.  They love learning new things and are excited to help and often get discouraged that they can't - but I don't like being a lab rat or a medical discovery center. This is not what I thought I was signing up for.

I still don't know if I will ever be 100% again. I have been diagnosed with Mixed Connective Tissue Disease (MCTD), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), Fibromyalgia (FM), Epstein-Barr Diease and like I said.. I have had many Lupus and MS symptoms, but I don't test positive for the diseases.  I have also had new thyroid and adrenal fatigue problems and I even have unexplainable blocked blood flow in my brain and lesions or marks on my brain that can't be pinpointed. With all of this, as you can imagine, it is very frustrating for my family and I and we have lost tens of thousands of dollars along with precious time that we'll never get back.

I am very sad every time I turn around and see breast implants being glamorized in the media and seen as something so routine and safe - when the truth is completely the opposite.  Just as smokers are warned about the dangers of cigarettes, I think the FDA should warn people about the real risks of surgery, instead of claiming that all of the dangers are unproven and that implants are safe and approved. If anyone had so much as warned me that there was even a 1% risk that I might lose my state of mind, my memory or sanity or have any type of brain damage - I wouldn't have risked it for an aesthetic outcome.  Life is too short to risk your sanity and health on a bigger bra size.

I finally feel like I have a future to once again dream about and look forward to and I am trying my hardest to stop looking back. I just want people to know that "safe" saline implants and the new and approved "safe" silicone implants are NOT SAFE AT ALL and I wish I had known this in December 2006.

I really realized who my true friends were and what a real relationship meant when I got sick and so many people have stood by my side even when they didn't know what was wrong. That's the only thing that kept me going sometimes is knowing that people cared about me.  Please take this information seriously and share it with anyone you know who has breast implants or is thinking of getting a future surgery.  

Treatments 

I tried everything possible. When you can barely see &; you feel dead, you feel desperate to get well. Doctors don't know enough to treat this illness yet so they will try whatever it takes in their specialty to treat the symptoms.  I felt like a pin cushion &; a lab rat. It has been very frustrating to try to convince doctors my symptoms were real and they needed to be treated. We spent countless hours in doctors’ offices trying to figure out what to do. From meeting so many sick women, seems the treatment is different for everyone since all our symptoms are different and react different to different treatments.  I was willing to try anything.  Below is a list of doctors I saw, their prescriptions and all of the treatments &; tests I went through since being implanted, explanted, surgery for scar tissue, a seizure and coma &; 1 week hospital stay at USC medical center.  I am glad I found a great doctor at USC who has seen hundreds of sick women and has really helped me on my road to recovery.

Some tests I have undergone..
  1. Adrenal Blood work (AM &; PM level blood tests 2x)
  2. Thyroid Blood work (5x and continuing)
  3. MRI of Brain w/ contrast injection (2x)
  4. MRI of Cervical Spine with contrast injection
  5. MRA of Brain – irregular artery seen
  6. CAT Scan of brain (3x)
  7. Lumbar puncture (spinal tap)
  8. Platinum blood tests
  9. Silicone allergy tests
  10. Lupus &; other ANA tests
  11. Epstein Barr – positive
  12. Psycho neurological Analysis
  13. Sjogeren’s Antibodies tests
  14. Lyme Disease tests
  15. AIDS tests
  16. Mercury level tests
  17. Sodium & Potassium tests
  18. Glucose tests
  19. BUN & Creatinine tests
  20. Protein, Albumin & Globulin tests
  21. Calcium tests
  22. Cholesterol & Triglycerides tests
  23. Hepatic Function Panel tests
  24. Alkaline Phosphatase tests
  25. TSH tests
  26. Hematology tests
  27. Urinalysis tests
  28. Vitamins tests
  29. Aspergillis Antibody tests
  30. SM & RNP Antibody tests
  31. Rheumatoid Factor tests
  32. Cortisol tests
  33. Plasma Renin Activity tests
  34. DHEA tests
  35. Aldosterone tests
  36. Testosterone tests
Medication I have tried..
  1. Xanax
  2. Mucinex
  3. Synthroid
  4. Levoxyl
  5. Armour
  6. Salt Pills
  7. Zoloft
  8. Tylenol
  9. Cortef
  10. Darvocet
  11. Rozerem
  12. Prednisone
  13. Soma
  14. Ritalin
  15. IV Morphine
  16. IV Glutathione
  17. Tramadol
  18. Fibrinogen
  19. Maxalt
  20. Diflucan
  21. Sporonox
  22. Nystatin
  23. Steroid injections
  24. Demerol
  25. Cymbalta
  26. Lyrica
  27. Neurotonin
  28. Provigil
  29. Plaquenil
Doctors/ Specialists I have seen..
  1. Family Doctor
  2. Internal Medicine Doctor
  3. Neurologist (OC &; USC specialists)
  4. Rheumatologists (USC &; UCLA specialists)
  5. Endocrinologists (Beverly Hills &; USC specialists)
  6. Psychologists (2)
  7. Infectious Disease doctor
Supplements/ Natural Treatments I tried..
  1. IV Vitamin C
  2. Epsom Salts &; Ginger Baths
  3. Saunas
  4. Foot Baths
  5. Acupuncture
  6. Massage Therapy
  7. Chiropractic Treatments
  8. Vitamin Supplements
  9. Mineral Supplements
  10. Diet changes
  11. Silicone allergy drops
  12. Liquid body soak gold baths
  13. Relaxation Tapes
  14. Prayer
  15. Colonics
  16. Coffee Enemas
  17. B12 injections &; sprays
*  I am not a doctor and do not endorse the usage of any of these methods without the advisement of a licensed physician. Please do not try any medical treatments without first consulting your doctor.

** Before I received my breast implants, all I took was allergy medicine when needed &; thyroid medicine for my hypothyroidism.

*** Please note: I am a young woman who became very ill from "safe" breast implants. I am not a doctor nor am I trying to end all plastic surgery. I just want to reach out to the public and say "Hey - this happened to me &; I wish someone had come out and told their story to me so that I would have known the real sicks of plastic surgery." If I had known that this could happen, I would've never gotten them.