Breast implants made me Dumb, Disabled & Deformed

Hey humans, 

I'm reaching out with deep vulnerability to open up about the medical journey I've been on for the last 8 months and ask for support. This is an incredibly uncomfortable thing for me to do -  I have been struggling for a while to talk about this publicly - but my doctors keep reminding me that asking for help is not a weakness, but a sign of being human. My community has been asking me to create a crowdfunding page for a while now so that they can help show support & share my story as I've slowly been opening up more about it, as this journey has not just been physically and mentally debilitating at times but also financially. 

So here it is. This is the story of how my breast implants made me Dumb, Disabled & Deformed...*WARNING* this is not a fairytale, it's a triple D dark demon tale, if you will. Potential triggers include: adult content, medical nudity, mental health & suicide. 

I share this story in depth in the hope that I can also light a candle in the dark for other women suffering silently with Breast Implant Illness. This has been an incredibly long journey for me, but it doesn't have to be for others. I am so incredibly grateful for the financial support but also more importantly -  please share this story, tell your friends, your wives, your daughters, don't shy away from the darker details or gravity of this issue...your word of mouth & help to raise awareness around this can and actually will save lives.  ♥ Grab a cuppa tea, this is a deep journey to share. 


IMPLANTATION

In 2014 I decided to get breast implants. It was not a decision I took lightly - quite the opposite -  I was basically the highschool nerd going down this path so I did a lot of research, compiled an excel spreadsheet of all the known risks I could find online, interviewed women with boob jobs for their experiences, and found what I thought was the safest surgeon in Australia to undergo breast augmentation surgery with. I went with what I was told were all the"safest" options - saline round smooth 350cc Mentor implants under the muscle, incision under the breast. (spoiler alert: there are no real safe options when it comes to breast implants I now know. ALL implants can cause Breast Implant Illness.)


THE HONEYMOON PERIOD 

At first...things were great! I felt like I had boobs for the first time in my life (a surgeon had described me as a "needy not greedy" candidate - I had been captain of the itty bitty titty committee with my natural breasts too small to even fit the smallest A cup bra) - and boy did we go on some adventures. As a creative performer I took great pleasure in utilising my body as a canvas for the art of costume design and other wearable artistry, so jumped at the opportunity to create visions I felt like I'd never had the curves to fill out before. I was painted for international bodypainting competitons, performances and music videos, had metal armour bras sculpted to fit my new form, put together the Brazilian carnivale costume I'd always wanted to bring to life, modelled self-designed lingerie on alternative catwalks and created many custom designed pieces to fit these new curves that would go on to grace many spaces around the world over these next few years. 



Ironically...although on stage my offerings appeared vibrant and colourful - behind the scenes  I started to develop a number of confusing health problems that at first were mild, but continued to get worse over time. I look back on these images now, especially this Mother Nature inspired one, and think how incredibly ironic it is that the toxic root cause of my emerging health issues was quite literally staring me in the face...yet I started to move from doctor to doctor with not one ever suspecting that my breast implants might be the root problem. To the many women whom approached me to compliment my form in this time after performances like these - I wish I could reach out to you all now to tell you all the full story of my journey with breast implants. I had no idea what I was about to lose. 



THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL 

My life behind-the-scenes began to replay like something out of a slow real life horror story over the next few years...I had been lied to by my surgeon about the safety and risks of these implants , and went on to slowly develop what I now know as Breast Implant Illness. The symptoms of BII crept in slowly & almost imperceptibly at first with some good days and some bad, but grew worse & worse gradually over the next few years until I was eventually reduced to an utter shell of myself. (You know the urban legend that if you throw a frog in boiling water it'll jump out, but if you put it in the pot and slowly raise the temperature  it'll stay in because it doesn't realise it's slowly being boiled alive? BII crept in like this...)

Over time I eventually become completely unrecognisable from my former vibrant self to friends and family, heavily debilitated with symptoms hitting all of my bodily systems, eventually became considered physically and mentally disabled by my doctors & university, but no tests could seem to explain the reason as to why.  They would test my blood multiple times, send me for scans, refer me to more doctors and hear me out but couldn't quite figure out what was going on - as all my results would come back inconclusive looking "normal". I felt anything but normal though - I felt like I was slowly dying. As it got worse over the years I slowly stopped being able to perform, stopped training, stopped creating, left the stages, stopped teaching, stopped being able to work or study properly, struggled to do basic life things or function as a normal human being, retracted from social circles with family and friends, and began spending a lot of time wondering why I felt like I was fading away . 



This was an incredibly lonely journey at times - with my somewhat stoic nature I shouldered and tried to process this mystery illness as much as I could myself, but sometimes I would break down and just cry uncontrollably to my then partner, my housemates or the few friends I was still able to relate with, trying to express the utter loss of self I was experiencing. With no diagnosis or answer as to why I was experiencing all of this, I began to just feel like a burden, hesitant to keep bringing up my struggles fearing others would think I was just complaining or starting to sound like a hypochondriac . My doctors were starting to treat me as such, as many other women experience along this journey . I became insecure about my new inabilities and would just try to put on a happy face around others, inwardly anxious at being judged for my decline that was slowly becoming more apparent. I feel like I tried so hard to be and appear okay in these times.  I eventually became less and less able to do that, and found myself retracting more and more from all my social circles - even my housemates and partner. I became so incredibly bedroom bound at times. It's hard to explain to others how you feel like you're dying while you're still in your 20's, that your body is waking up feeling 90 years old too weak some days to even lift a pen when just a little while ago I used to be a circus aerialist swinging from the rafters - it sounds ridiculous doesn't it? I started to feel like I was locked inside a body and mind that wasn't mine anymore - they had become a foreign prison. From the outside looking in, Breast Implant Illness is hard to understand. From the inside looking out, it's hard to explain. 

I wasn't fun anymore. My spark had gone. Basic human tasks became mountains to climb. My wavering health had shifted the dynamics of all of the relationships I had in my life and my ability to work. I was starting to feel like I was barely alive inside anymore. I felt shameful and embarrassed of my symptoms and state, was frustrated at having been treated by some doctors like a hypochondriac because there were more symptoms than they knew what to do with...at times I was prescribed over 10 - 15 pills a day at times just to try to exist, with their effectiveness being minimal. Over the course of these years I saw a multitude of different doctors to try to manage the symptoms: GPs, integrative doctors, naturopaths, sleep doctors, dermatologists, psychologists, chinese medicine doctors, bodyworkers, myotherapists, medical mediums, energy healers, indigenous healers, plant medicine healers, embodiment healers...the list just went on.  A part of me almost started to resign myself to this diminishing existence  - it just got incredibly exhausting to feel like every part of myself that had made me ME was fading away (figuratively & physically...I was losing weight uncontrollably and would scarily dip below 37kg in these times). It felt like my body and mentality was expiring at an incredible rate.

This was honestly the darkest period of my life... Breast Implant Illness mysteriously haunted a large part of my 20's in a way that was incredibly debilitating at times and confusing, and almost led to me taking my own life. 




So what is Breast Implant Illness you ask? 

Breast Implant Illness (or BII) is the term used to describe the constellation of symptoms that some women develop after getting breast implants, also sometimes referred to as autoimmune/inflammatory syndrome induced by adjuvants (ASIA).  Symptoms involve many different organ systems, occurring in previously healthy women only after implant placement, and mimic an autoimmune disease but with tests coming back confusingly looking "normal".  Some women experience the symptoms quickly, after many years, or not at all, and there is a sliding scale from mild to completely debilitating as to how bad the symptoms can be for different women. My experience of BII was a slow but eventual complete decimation of self & abilities.  For the majority of women the systemic autoimmune symptoms disappear, subside or significantly improve after removing their implants. 



THE REVELATION 

After struggling with these ongoing confusing health issues getting progressively worse for over half a decade that different doctors could not properly diagnose, nothing seemed to be getting to the root of the problem or really helping. It was just getting worse. I was having a major symptoms flare up last year when one of my implants also started noticeably leaking (and I thank the powers that be for this sign) when my doctors and I finally started considering whether my breast implants could also be linked to my other health problems. And that was the catalyst for finally realising that ***every single mystery health problem I had been struggling with ticked the criteria for Breast Implant Illness and had been onset with a steady decline since breast augmentation ***

I was actually a textbook case for BII, now that we were looking deeply at it. After feeling like I had been inexplicably slowly fading away in my 20s  - everything finally made sense. I connected with woman after woman around the world online sharing their creepily similar story of developing autoimmune like symptoms after getting breast implants, and my heart broke for each one of us that had walked in the dark for so long before finally realising...but I was exponentially relieved to finally see the bigger picture. And so I joined the hundreds of thousands of women around the world whom have walked the difficult path towards explant (surgery to get the implants out), detoxification & recovery from BII. 


MY SYMPTOMS OF BREAST IMPLANT ILLNESS



The symptoms of Breast Implant Illness I experienced include: 

- Extreme Fatigue
- Muscle & joint pain
- Extreme vomiting episodes
- Uncontrollable weight loss
- Hair falling out
- Insomnia 
- Intense anxiety 
- Severe depression 
- Suicidal thoughts 
- Social anxiety 
- Brain fog 
- Memory problems 
- Cognitive decline 
- Slurred speech & stammers 
- Uncontrollable sweating - day & night
- Toxic foul body odour
- Body shakes & tremors 
- Fever/chills
- Heart palpitations 
- Mood swings 
- Panic attacks
- Vision problems
- Headaches 
- Shortness of breath
- Food intolerance & digestive problems 
- Constant dehydration & dryness 
- Accelerated dental decay  
- Limb numbness/tingling 
- Temperature intolerance 
- Sensitivity to light 
- Sensitivity to sound 
- Ringing in ears 
- Skin rashes 
- Adult acne 
- Decreased libido 
- Slow healing
- Constant sinus infections 
- Immunity problems 
- Swollen/tender lymph nodes 
- Inflammation 
- Autoimmune symptoms 
- Chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms 
- Fibromyalgia symptoms 


It's impossible to really convey the depth of what it's like to journey with BII by just listing my symptoms in a nutshell like this. I did not experience these symptoms at the same level the average person does - it was much, much more severe. I've gone into more detail at the bottom of this page - *God bless those of you who make it to the bottom, please do* - even though that still feels insufficient to carry the depth of this experience.

Online you will find plenty of testimonials from women with BII attesting to how - it can really feel like you are slowly dying from the inside out. Women who've had cancer three times and speak about how BII was worse than all that cancer put together. I know that statement may shock many who aren't aware of the gravity of what BII can be like to experience (some women only experience it mildly)- but I think it's important to hear to understand how bad it can be at this end of the spectrum too. You are reduced to an utter shell of yourself, mentally, physically, emotionally, on all many levels - trying to figure out what is going on while becoming more disabled, often being dismissed by doctors, misdiagnosed or just treated symptomatically...along this journey I felt like I was at the bottom of a deep, dark hole, trying to climb out, but grappling for rungs while having been blinded to the big picture of what was actually happening. 

Scarily, there are some women who do not make it alive out from BII . 

Women with breast implants are 6x more likely to commit suicide than others . This is an insanely scary statistic, but I can personally vouch for how loud the suicidal thoughts can be while journeying with BII. This fact is incredibly hard to talk about personally - I come from a culture where this is still a huge stigma in talking about mental health - but I'm doing it & asking you to spread the word too because there are many woman out there suffering with BII still in the dark having no idea why they are experiencing this, and you could help light a candle for them too. Help spread the word, they're not alone - a conversation about this can save a life. ♥ 


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MEDICAL COSTS I'M CROWDFUNDING TO HELP RAISE SUPPORT TO PAY

These are just some of the medical costs I've incurred in the last 8 months along this journey to explant & recovery. The realisation that I was experiencing Breast Implant Illness and needed an explant ASAP came in the middle of the covid pandemic. When the pandemic first hit I suddenly lost all of my work in the lockdown, drained my Superannuation to survive off in that time, and was struggling with debilitating BII symptoms while trying to get to surgery. I wanted to put this page up back then but to be honest...I didn't know how to speak openly about this yet. I also had no idea at that point how long and expensive the journey to surgery would turn out to be. I graciously accepted the offer from family to lend me some $ and their credit cards to do this ASAP, with the view to crowdfund after to help pay it back. I have since had the explant surgery and I am just getting back on my feet again, so any support to help with these medical costs is greatly appreciated. 

EXPLANT SURGERY
- Surgeon's fees: $8,000
- Assistant surgeon: $700
- Anaesthetist: $1,500
- Hospital fees: $2,942
- Explant surgeon pre & post-op consultation fees: $300 + $150 + $150 + $150 + $150

OTHER SURGEON'S CONSULTING FEES
- Surgeon #1 27/7/20: $220 
- Surgeon #2 4/8/20: $100 
- Surgeon #3: free in public system 
- Surgeon #4: 24/9/20 $290 + 7/10/20 $230 

SCANS
- Breast & abdomen ultrasounds: -
- Breast MRI 24/7/20: $470

HOSPITAL VISITS
- Epworth Hospital for breast biopsy: $541 

PATHOLOGY
- TissuPath Specialist Pathology services (for breast biopsy) invoiced 2/10/20: $126
- Histolab pathology invoiced 31/12/20: $273
- Melbourne Pathology (for microbiology post-op) invoiced 7/1/21: $54

SPECIALIST DOCTORS 
Specialist doctor at the National Institute of Integrative Medicine 
- 12/10/20: $330 (surgery consultation)
- 23/11/20: $220 (mental health plan review) 
- 24/11/20: $110 (surgery consultation) 
- 15/12/20: $220 (surgery consultation)
- 26/2/21: $115 (surgery consultation)

SUPPORT SYSTEMS
-  Specialist psychologist at 460 Next Practice health 30/11/20: $170 
- Breast Implant Illness Warriors detoxification & recovery program purchased 13/9/20: $409.71
- GP prescribed government approved medical CBD oil for anxiety & pain: $350

ACCERERATED DENTAL DECAY
- Emergency appointment 2/11/20: $418
- Filling 13/11/20: $130
- Filling 5/01/21:  $480
- 8/2/21: $220
- Root canal appt #1: $547
- Root canal appt #2: $547
- Root canal appt #3: $430


= ...a grand total of $21,042.71  in 8 months to get to explant surgery & manage the symptoms of Breast Implant Illness. 

- minus $820.10 in applicable Medicare rebates for the above = $20,222.61
+ GoFund Me's processing fee of 2.2% (of $20,222.61) = $444.90

= $20,667.51 medical costs crowdfunding amount  

 

Pretty insane huh? 

***This  is a link to copies of all of the above medical invoice costs. 



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THE JOURNEY TO SURGERY & RECOVERY 


SURGEONS


The journey to getting surgery was not an easy one. When explanting, surgeons must not just take out the implant but also the scar tissue capsule that has grown around them (a capsulectomy). This is particularly important for women experiencing BII otherwise they may still continue to get sick . (This explant expert likens it to leaving part of a tumor inside if you don't).  However not all surgeons are able or willing to do this, as a full capsulectomy is a complicated surgery and can put a patient at risk of pneumothorax or a collapsed lung. 

I met with 5 surgeons along the quest to finally find one whom could do this surgery for me. 


1. Surgeon #1 (my original surgeon) gave me advice that my other surgeons and doctors called downright dangerous, unethical & suggested I get legal advice against - he wanted to intentionally rupture my 2nd intact implant and let them both slowly leak out inside me before replacing them with new implants. He did not want to do a capsulectomy.  
2.  Surgeon #2 wanted to turn a blind eye to BII. 
3.  Surgeon #3 was in the public system and told me it would take 2+ years to get the surgery in there. 
4.  Surgeon #4 I found at a Breast Cancer Specialist Surgery Center - it was from here I was referred to hospital for a breast biopsy to test a suspicious lump to rule out BIA-ALCL (the cancer caused by breast implants. This was not a fun test to wait to get back.) I saw this surgeon for a couple of months in good hopes until she finally quoted me 26k+ for the explant surgery. 
5.  Surgeon #5 whom I finally booked in the surgery with was an experienced explanter, could do it in covid & guaranteed me she would do a full capsulectomy as much as possible. She was also willing to document parts of the surgery for me to share afterwards. 

Each of these surgeons warned me that I would be "deformed" after an explant + capsulectomy, and asked if I wanted to consider putting another pair of implants in or doing a fat transfer. "Deformed" is a hard word to swallow. Still I looked at the surgeons in disbelief each time this was suggested - unable to process how they could even suggest putting another pair of implants in after what I'd already experienced from them. Also at a loss as to where they were fantasising about getting extra fat from for a fat transfer - I was skin and bones sitting in front of them, barely over 37kg again. I refused these ideas and willingly chose "deformity" over these suggested cosmetic surgeries, because I knew on a visceral level that my health and ability to live was way more important than my curves. I didn't want to f*ck with nature anymore. 


SURGERY

By the time I eventually got to surgery (after 5 straight months of halted meetings with different surgeons during covid industry lockdowns while my health continued to decline) my ruptured implant had almost completely deflated and leaked all its contents inside my body. It was a disturbing experience to witness this slowly leak inside myself a little more each day, knowing that the "safe saline solution" they were filled with - has at times been found to be colonised by mould and other bacterias in other women. I was also now extremely aware that the "safe saline solution" inside the silicone shell that's been inside a warm body for over half a decade - is no longer simply just saline. It's just like leaving a plastic bottle of water inside a hot car - the properties of the liquid can change over time, and the silicone can bleed. My other breast had also strangely been swelling and growing in size in this time - demonstrated in the breast MRI scans I had done. 



The surgery itself was not an easy one - explant + capsulectomy surgery is much more complicated than initial breast augmentation surgery. 

The scar tissue capsule that had formed around my implants was greatly adherent & fused to my muscles, my breast tissue and my ribs. Surgeons attempt to take the capsule out in one piece without breaking it where possible to reduce potential contamination, but this was not fully possible in my case. 

My surgeon worked to scrape it off my ribs where it had become difficultly adherent. She cut away at the scar tissue attached to my pec muscle - having to eventually also cut some of my pec muscle out with it where the fibres were too adherent to to separate. I also lost some breast tissue in the process of this. 




There were parts of the scar tissue capsule that they were not able to cut or scraped off - and so these were burnt away inside me with a diathemy. You can see the charred parts of my tissue here. 


Women routinely ask for photos of their capsules taken out like I did below - to ensure that they have been properly removed, because leaving them in can continue to make women sick. 



RECOVERY

The journey to recovery from BII post-explant is not a linear one, for some women it can feel almost instant while for others it can take a year or so to really detox their systems back to a normal state. For me - some of my symptoms dropped away very quickly and felt almost instantly better, while others have required a bit more time. 

I've found that it has taken a few months post-surgery to really bring all of my bodily systems back into alignment and watch the lingering symptoms drop away. After housing these foreign objects in my body for over half a decade - my body needed some time to build up its immunity again and work through the buildup of infections, toxic chemicals, plastic chemicals, hormone disrupting chemicals and just overall bodily overwhelm it had been experiencing for so long.

After surgery my implants and capsules were sent away for microbiology testing, and it was confirmed that my capsules had actually been colonised by 3 different types of organisms. This is not uncommon. I have been prescribed antimicrobials by my specialist doctor to help fight these, and we are still working with a detox protocol including lots of lymphatic drainage and sauna sweating to move the last couple of lingering symptoms. 

I have lost the sensation of feeling to the touch all across my chest where the scar tissue capsule was cut out of me - but have hopes that with time and some practices I'm using the nerves will regenerate and the feeling will come back. 

I still have final appointments scheduled over the next month with my surgeon, specialist doctor and dentist to finish up the work that they have started along this journey to recovery. My psychologist suggested I may have some light PTSD in integrating this journey - and to be honest I have felt it, there were parts of this that were personally harrowing...it has taken quite a few sessions talking through this experience quietly before I've found myself able to open up about it more publicly like this. I'm finding that even though it's still not easy, the more I open up about this the less heavy it feels. 

I can unequivocally say though now 4 months into the recovery post-surgery - that I feel like a completely different person having taken out the breast implants now. Of the 40+ symptoms I was experiencing, almost all of them have completely dropped away. I can eat and actually digest food again, sleep again, think again, breathe again, actually function like a normal human being once more, feel my energy and spark coming back more and more each day. My experience of life while experiencing BII with the implants in and now in recovery with them out is as different as night and day. There is absolutely no comparison - I feel like I'm living in a completely different body and mind. This has felt like nothing short of an exorcism and resurrection. And I'm so incredibly grateful for having been able to get this surgery in this time - because it was truly life changing and life saving. I don't know how much longer I would have lasted with them in. 

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Why did it take so long to realise I was dealing with BII? How could I not have known? How could anyone helping me not have seen this before? 

I've thought this to myself many times, and have been asked it many times as well now too. Here's the jig. 

SURGEONS DO NOT WARN WOMEN ABOUT BII
Surgeons do not warn women about Breast Implant Illness when they give them the list of risks to tick off on to gain "informed consent" before breast augmentation surgery. They are not required to in Australia,  at least not yet, although this has finally started to change in America where last year in 2020 the FDA finally recommended a black box warning for breast implants, including warnings about breast implant illness. This is after over 50 years of a documented history of women experiencing breast implant illness  and having to advocate themselves for awareness. Including the largest class action lawsuit settlement to date in the US in the 90's where implant manufacturer Dow Corning was made to pay 3.4 billion to 170,000+ women whose breast implants had made them similarly sick. Watch them on Oprah raising their voices back in 1995 then, and again recently in 2019 here: 



There is a huge profit over patient mentality in this industry so that surgeons cannot be relied on to warn women of BII on their own. I am now actively advocating for surgeons in Australia to also be made to warn ALL women about BII - so that they can actually make an informed decision, and know what to look for in case it develops in them too. 

LACK OF RECOGNITION IN MEDICAL COMMUNITY 
BII is not widely recognised by the medical community, with many medical professionals still having little awareness of it. It is not taught in their medical training. As there is also no single diagnostic test for it yet, women often arrive at the diagnosis after having been tested for everything else and eliminating all other possibilities. Many women spend years some even decades often first being wrongly misdiagnosed, some actually wrongly being told they need other operations to fix their health problems only to later realise it was their breast implants all along. Because there is such little recognition in the medical community, the realisation of BII is often sometimes sparked by other women sharing their journey with BII to advocate for and raise awareness about this. This is where your word of mouth in helping me share this story can help save others . 

THE BII SPECTRUM
The first and only time I'd  heard of BII before was a couple of years ago from a girl friend who developed mild systemic symptoms over 6 months and had her implants removed soon thereafter. However her systemic symptoms looked so different to what I was already experiencing at the time - I'd watched her journey and thought "that's doesn't look like what I'm experiencing" and figured all women with this "breast implant illness" just experienced these mild symptoms like hers. I didn't know there was a spectrum from mild to completely debilitating on which women experience BII, and that we were already at either ends. I didn't know at that point that BII wasn't widely recognised in the medical community, that there wasn't a diagnostic test for it yet, and so I had expected that if it was something I should be worried about that my doctors would have already picked it up easily across my many visits and tests. The breast augmentation surgery was the only surgery listed on my medical file, they were all aware of that. However none of them had enough awareness to question it, and so I journeyed in the dark it for another couple of years before the implant rupture would finally light the red flag. 

SALINE "SAFETY" BULLSH*T
My saline implants had been shrouded by a false sense of safety from my original surgeon who'd implanted them in me - I'd gone back to his website when first hearing of BII and read that "saline implants are not associated with BII, only silicone". He had a whole marketing page dedicated to convincing women that the saline implants he implanted would never cause BII.  This, my friends, is utter bullsh*t. Women have been experiencing BII from both silicone and saline implants  for decades (both are encased in a silicone shell). I know now that his marketing pitch that his saline implants were "safe" from BII was just clear evidence of his profit over patients mentality, and his willingness to overtly lie to women about the safety of what he was implanting in them. Other doctors have advised me to get legal advice against him for spreading such dangerous misinformation & said that he should have been responsible for the explant surgery, but he wanted to take no responsibility and lawsuits are not my path. I have just learned not to trust what cosmetic surgeons might try to promise you the HARD way now, but I just want to reiterate this for anyone in the back:

***BOTH SALINE AND SILICONE GEL IMPLANTS CAN CAUSE BREAST IMPLANT ILLNESS***

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ADVOCACY WORK

Breast Implant Illness is an extremely contentious issue in the medical community, with the cosmetic surgery industry often wanting to try turn a blind eye to it in what is a billion dollar industry & the most most popular cosmetic surgery in the world. I had to fight & advocate for myself HARD along this journey to find a doctor who could see the bigger picture enough to question whether breast implants could be the root cause of all of these symptoms, and then to find a surgeon who could perform the complicated explant + capsulectomy surgery...and wasn't simply interested in trying to upsell me a new pair of implants with fat transfer. The profit over patient mentality in this industry is sickeningly real. 
Insurance companies do not cover explant for BII. Medicare does not cover this. 

Women have been fighting for DECADES for awareness to be raised around Breast Implant Illness so that we can no longer be lied to about the risks of breast implants. I have now joined them in this crusade. 

Since surgery I have been taking steps to have my experience contribute to the mounting evidence of BII in Australia, including: 
- Submitting the details of my BII journey to the Australian Breast Implant Device Registry 
- Making a medical device adverse event report to the TGA 
- Becoming a part of a new Australian research study into BII
- Agreeing to share my story on a podcast, a documentary & an online magazine. Please reach out if you have other avenues that you think would resonate to continue spreading this message through too, I wish to spread it far & wide. 


There are thousands of women around the world fighting this fight with me, and we are calling for: 

- Support for the campaigns women are creating raising awareness around BII for women (eg. #notourdaughters  & #iwasharmed grassroots campaigns)
- Surgeons to be mandated to warn women about the possible risk of developing Breast Implant Illness before their patients can actually give "informed consent" to the risks of getting breast augmentation surgery. 
- For Breast Implant Illness to be recognised properly around the world as a classified condition, so that women can access the support they need from their health insurance funds and public health systems to explant and recover. 
- Better education for doctors to be able to recognise the symptoms of Breast Implant Illness when patients end up in their offices dealing with all of the symptoms. 
- Retribution for the implant manufacturing companies & surgeons whom have constantly lied to women for years about BII to prioritise their profits over their patients. 



LINKS to more information on Breast Implant Illness: 

- Presentation on the history & current climate of BII
What Doctors and the FDA arent telling you about the dangers of breast implants 

- ABC article this week on growing BII concerns
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-18/breast-implant-illness-concerns-changed-my-mind-about-surgery/13243446

- ABC Australia recent doc on BII: 
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/boobs-behaving-badly/13175276

- New 5 Investigation: are your breast implants making you sick? 
https://www.wkrg.com/news-5-investigates/news-5-investigates-are-your-breast-implants-making-you-sick/

- Women raising awareness sharing their journeys with BII: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz9Ywu2UWow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q5qV1lpGQo&t=1168s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H407ownhCI&t=190s

- Breast Cancer Org on BII: 
https://www.breastcancer.org/treatment/surgery/reconstruction/types/implants/special-report/breast-implant-illness

- ICIJ report on the FDA keeping thousands of breast implant incident reports hidden from the public & spotlight now on BII
https://www.icij.org/investigations/implant-files/fda-kept-hundreds-of-thousands-of-breast-implant-incidents-hidden-from-public/

- Breast Implant Illness Healing by Nicole (largest online support group for BII)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Healingbreastimplantillness

- Family fundraises to explant daughter's breast implants that are slowly killing her 
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/my-daughters-breast-implants-slowly-19876442


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DEEPER DIVE INTO MY BREAST IMPLANT ILLNESS SYMPTOMS 

It's impossible to put 6 years worth of a slow decline into a few paragraphs. But here's a bit more detail on how I experienced the symptoms individually to help paint the larger picture. I think it's important to share a bit more deeply in detail to help others be able to recognise this too. 


- EXTREME FATIGUE: I went from being an incredibly active human that thrived on juggling 3 jobs, a multitude of activity & dance classes and  passion projects - to starting to have days where I would wake feeling so incredibly exhausted I could barely lift my head. It didn't matter how long I slept. I couldn't actually lift a pillow, or a pencil I would wake up that exhausted on these days, the fatigue would be so extreme. It made no sense to me, being the girl who loved training aerials and regularly lifted my whole body weight and more around the apparatus - suddenly I was waking up feeling like I'd run a marathon without even getting out of bed. My body would feel so incredibly heavy, so inexplicably tired. Over time these days would blur into weeks, and I started to feel locked in a prison of inexplicable fatigue. I felt incredible shame for this, at first perceiving it as a need for recovery and then laziness before realising I had no control over it. I became an absolute ghost of my former energetic self. 
- MUSCLE & JOINT PAIN: I started to experience severe muscle pain that was very different from the usual recovery pain I'd get after my usual 5+ aerial dance classes I was taking back then. I used to train moves until I'd bruise and wear the bruises like badges of honour. But after a while even without working out my muscles started to feel constantly tired and achey, even after I took long breaks from training to try recover, and eventually training became a pipe dream. My back pain grew until it had me hunched over like a grandma. I'd leave bruises on my own shoulders trying to massage out the huge knots that never went away there. My joints became swollen and stiff, and it became painful to do the simplest things sometimes like even just type because of the pain in my wrists I would experience. I went to many bodyworkers and was prescribed some of the same arthritis medication my 90-year-old grandma is on to try help with this, but was at a loss as to what was actually happening. 
- EXTREME VOMITING EPISODES: I started having unpredictable vomiting episodes where I would become like the exorcist and start uncontrollably vomiting for sometimes 12+ hours. These sessions were scary. This happened over these years unexpectedly at home, at work, while travelling, at festivals and would end up with me in the medics tent with them unable to stop it nomatter what they tried. Friends and housemates would often be left deciding whether to either call the hospital or my family to come help, because I would become incredibly weak and dehydrated in these episodes, they were scared. Doctors would try to give me pills I couldn't keep down & shots to make it stop to no avail. I would go and get tested after these toxic episodes but all my levels and results would come back looking confusingly "normal".  
- UNCONTROLLABLE WEIGHT LOSS: I started to lose weight uncontrollably, at times losing over 1/4 of my body weight to dip down below 37kgs. It's scary to lose so much of yourself in this way. It felt like my body could no longer digest food properly or absorb the nutrients, and the extreme vomiting episodes didn't help. I'd lose so much weight my friends would ask if I'd had a second boob job - because with my ribs now protruding, the breast implants jutted out extra obviously from my chest. 
- HAIR FALLING OUT My hair started falling out in clumps - in my fingers, in the shower and in my brush. Not the usual amounts -  this was enough to form a small animal with each time. My hair started thinning so much I started shaving parts of it stylistically to make it less noticeable, but eventually ended up shaving over over 1/2 my hair off in the process as the thinning just grew. I started wearing hair extensions to disguise the fact my hair just kept getting thinner and shorter instead of growing, to the point where people started to not recognise me without them. 
- INSOMNIA: I had known the oddless sleep night before, but suddenly I started dealing with insomnia on a completely different level. An odd night of insomnia here or there became a couple nights without slumber more regularly, and then eventually I found myself sometimes going 3 days+ without actually being able to fall asleep. This felt like torture at times. I couldn't think. I felt like my face was going to fall off. The bouts of insomnia came and went unexpectedly, and greatly affected my ability to function and commit myself to things. I remember in the midst of one bout having to pull out of a dream group interstate performance I'd been rehearsing for and forego flights simply because my body could not seem to let itself switch off and actually fall asleep - I just couldn't function. 
- SEVERE ANXIETY: I had known anxiety minimally before in my life, but what I started to experience was acute. I would wake up with my heart racing and would walk through my day with this fear of impending doom looming. I felt like I was slowly diminishing, and it was like my body was locked in this fight/flight survival response state 24/7 of slowly being poisoned. Someone would go to hug me and I would wonder anxiously if they could feel how hard my heart was constantly beating in my chest - this anxiety felt like it just grew over the years until it was locked on hard. 
- SEVERE DEPRESSION: I started to experience severe depression a few years ago. Over these years I moved through 4 different mental health plans all citing severe depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. I'd go and see the psychologists, talk about wounds in my past from childhood or relationships that I thought might help, but the cloud of depression was dark and heavy and could not really be lifted in this way. 
- SUICIDAL THOUGHTS: The suicidal thoughts started a few years ago, irregularly at first until they eventually became daily. This might be the hardest part to talk about. Walking with a mystery illness without diagnosis has its own toll of feeling misunderstood - and I blamed myself for my slow decline for the first few years without understanding what was actually going on. Slowly losing your physical, mental and emotional abilities without explanation has its own toll on the soul. I still didn't expect them though - they were so out of character for me so when the suicidal thoughts came I carried further shame for them. It wasn't until I realised I was dealing with BII that I discovered how common these thoughts are amongst us. Women with breast implants have a 6x higher suicide rate. Throughout covid I was talking to 2 psychologists, had the CAT team number on hand, had my GP recommend another mental health support team for emergencies, and I broke the iron belt lockdown at one point to drive out to family when I was really, really in need of support. Please talk about this with your sisters to let them know they're never alone - yes, breast implants can actually make you want to kill yourself. 
- SOCIAL ANXIETY: I went from being a social butterfly to suddenly having bouts of social anxiety where I just couldn't be around people and started spending a lot of time in my car alone. It was like my ability to function would dip so low below what felt permissable, that it was easier to go try be alone than constantly feel embarrassed or shameful about not being able to mentally follow on conversations or be okay around others. As the cognitive decline worsened and the shame grew I really struggled to try communicate to others what I was experiencing, and slowly retracted from all my social circles - family, friends, housemates and partner. You just don't really feel like being around others when you feel like you're growing dumb and disabled, having suicidal thoughts & fading away. 
- MEMORY PROBLEMS: I started experiencing acute memory problems to the point where I actually started studying dementia care in an online university because I was afraid I was starting to experience early onset dementia. I wasn't, memory problems are a common symptom of BII, but it started to make life incredibly frustrating. I couldn't remember people's names whom I'd met 10x before. I couldn't even remember actually meeting them. People would get angry at me for going to re-introduce myself to them in these moments - but it really wasn't intentional. I couldn't remember the start of a sentence someone was saying before the finished it. I couldn't remember the start of my own thoughts sentences in my own head. Things just no longer seemed to be able to stick in my brain, it was so foggy, they'd just fall out. 
- COGNITIVE DECLINE & BRAIN FOG: I started to experience extreme cognitive decline. It was like the neural pathways I used to use regularly were weakening, and suddenly I couldn't remember words I'd normally use on a daily basis. I went from always being an eloquent person to suddenly struggling to structure a sentence. I couldn't follow on a conversation, and struggled to grasp simple concepts. I couldn't focus or concentrate. I started to actually feel like I was becoming dumb, and making stupid mistakes everywhere. I felt like I couldn't trust my own mind anymore. 
- SLURRED SPEECH & STAMMERS: For the first time in my life I started experiencing speech stammers. I had been a girl who'd grown up winning debating and public speaking competitions, loving speech choir and poetry. And suddenly I found a stutter creeping into my speech that felt like someone else was speaking through my mouth at times. As the memory problems and cognitive decline worsened I found myself slurring my words more too - it was like things were foggy in my head so they started coming out foggy too. 
- UNCONTROLLABLE SWEATING:  I started to experience bouts of uncontrollable bodily sweating, that could happen day and night, where my body would just sweat so intensely & profusely I would stain the bed with whatever bedclothes I was wearing. I would shower and then just drench a t-shirt again within 5 minutes. This could go on for 4 - 5 hours sometimes. These sessions felt like my body was just trying to detox and sweat something out it couldn't actually get out. It felt gross. 
- TOXIC FOUL BODY ODOUR: A couple of years ago I noticed my body odour start to change sometimes - interestingly mostly out of my right armpit - to a foul, chemical-soupy smell at times. I became super self conscious about this - sometimes I would scrub my armpit in the shower for 10 mins and it would still be there. My partner commented on it, I remember crying to girlfriends a couple of years ago back then expressing my confusion and fear as to what was actually going on with my body. It didn't feel like my own anymore. 
- BODY SHAKES & FEVER/CHILLS: The sweating episodes could also sometimes be accompanied by my body feeling incredibly cold and starting to tremble and shake lots, while also having a fever to the touch. These sweating shaking episodes would just leave me exhausted. 
- HEART PALPITATIONS:  I started to experience regular heart palpitations that would wake me at 3am, or pop up unexpectedly throughout the day. My body actually felt like it was locked in a constant fight-flight response and didn't know how to switch itself off. I would go and have ECGs that seemed fine in the moment but the unexpected palpitations just got worse & worse. 
- MOOD SWINGS: I started to feel like my normal ability to regulate my emotions was sliding, and I started to experience mood swings and having lots of emotional outbursts. I know now that breast implants are made with chemicals that are hormone disruptors and mood swings are common with BII, but at the time I felt like I was going through puberty again. 
- PANIC ATTACKS: I experienced many panic attacks in this time, something I'd never known before and the strength of them were shocking to me at times. They could come out of nowhere, leaving my chest heaving, throat choking, heart palpitating and I would have to run out of whatever social situation I was in just to try to be able to breathe again. They didn't seem to be triggered by anything in particular but could also happen while I was driving, and I would have to pull over to not crash. I didn't realise how scary a panic attack could be until I had them myself - they are no easy ride. As the panic attacks got worse I became less and less able to participate in social things. 
- VISION PROBLEMS: I started having problems with my vision and blurriness. Spots of blurriness were developing in my vision that I couldn't blink away. I would get especially scared when this popped up while I was driving - I'd have to pull over. In my confusion I'd clean my glasses or put a fresh pair of contacts in & close my eyes until I could open them to clear vision. I'd go back to my optometrist to test my glasses and contacts but she'd say there didn't seem to anything wrong with my vision - and would just send me away with a new brand of contacts or extra strength eye drops. But the blurriness would still randomly pop up and could be quite scary - it could even inhibit me from being able to read the words on a page if it popped up while I was reading. 
- HEADACHES: I started experiencing headaches and migranes at a level I had not known before. These could be onset by the growing sensitivity to noise and light I was also developing, but could also gnaw at my head out of nowhere. 
- SHORTNESS OF BREATH: After getting breast implants, I noticed over time that my ability to breathe seemed to be being inhibited. I thought it was sinus issues at first, but once I cleared those I realised I still couldn't seem to easily get in a full lung full of air. It wasn't until I explanted my breast implants that I fully understood the weight that was sitting on my chest, and how much shallower the amount of air I was able to breathe in with them there was. The heart palpitations & anxiety also felt like it lent to an inability to really breathe deeply. It was so, so hard to breathe and wear a mask during covid at times like this. After explanting I felt like I took my first deep breath in over half a decade and was actually be able to fill my full lung capacity with air again. 
- FOOD INTOLERANCE & DIGESTIVE PROBLEMS: I felt my body move from being able to eat just about anything, to suddenly feeling like it was struggling to process everything. Foods that I had eaten since I was a child were making me sick, new replacements I would try were having the same effect, every time I went to the naturopath she would have a new list of foods for me to avoid that my body was now reacting too. It felt like my body lost the ability to actually tolerate and digest food or absorb food properly - everything would react in some way. 
- CONSTANT DEHYDRATION & DRYNESS: I started to feel like I was so dry everywhere - my skin, my eyes, my mouth, even my insides. It didn't matter how much I hydrated or used moisturising creams or lip balms or eye drops - the whole of me felt like I was being dried out from the inside out. 
- ACCELERATED DENTAL DECAY: I never thought breast implants could cause accelerated dental decay until I experienced it all of a sudden last year myself, and then talked to many other BII women who have also had even worse surprises of 10 - 20k of dental work crop up along their journey to explant. After never having had a cavity or needing a single filling before in my life, I suddenly needed 8+ consecutive dental appointments with my long-term dentist to do major work against the sudden accelerated decay that had popped up all at once. The link between breast implants and dental decay has been becoming established from a number of angles  for a while now. 
- LIMB NUMBNESS/TINGLING: I started to experience tingles and unexpected numbness on one side of my body, my right mostly. This could happen to just a limb or the whole side, but would sometimes happen while I was dancing on stage and I'd have to strategically find a way to disguise my dead limbs. 
- TEMPERATURE INTOLERANCE: I started to experience extreme temperature intolerance, much more than usual, to the point where it felt like nothing I could do could really warm up my extremities. They would just absolutely freeze - to the point where I couldn't really touch other people, they would yelp. 
- SENSITIVITY TO LIGHT: Light started to feel like it could blind me much easier than before. I'd normally been a person who was drawn to the "pretty lights" and light design in spaces - and suddenly found myself shrinking away from the lasers and light installations because they would actually hurt my eyes. I found myself actually closing my blinds and shrinking into the shadows inside when the sun was out because it felt like that could be too intense too - it would start to give me headaches if it was too bright. This felt incredibly uncharacteristic for the sun-loving person I'd always grown up as. 
- SENSITIVITY TO SOUND: I started to experience this sensitivity to sound that would leave me clutching my head for the headaches it could induce. I used to thrive in loud places, drumming in my earlier years and enjoying working in festival and club spaces. But suddenly they started to make me feel aurally overwhelmed, loud noise felt invasive in my head and it seriously affected my ability to work in them - I'd end up in the back room trying to hold different pressure points to help with the headaches, taking panadol or having to leave. 
- SKIN RASHES: I started to develop rashes on my body that at first I just tried to explain away as my skin reacting different pieces of clothing. They were pieces of clothing I'd been wearing for years though. The rashes could last uncomfortably for months and sometimes cover my whole thigh, and didn't responding to any of the topical creams I was prescribed to try to treat it with. 
- ADULT ACNE: I had known pimples through puberty but suddenly for the first time in my life - I started dealing with whole sections of my body being covered in acne, bordering on cystic at times. This got particularly bad after the rupture, but my chest, my neck, the areas around my lymph nodes and my back especially became covered in acne that was unrelenting and renewed with force each day. Doctors prescribed me creams that didn't work, it felt like this was coming from a much deeper hormonal system disruption that creams couldn't fix.  
- DECREASED LIBIDO: this one is pretty self explanatory but...I went from having a healthy sex drive & appetite to suddenly just feeling incredibly dry and dead in that area. 
- SLOW HEALING: I started noticing myself taking much longer than usual to heal from basic injuries in muscle or skin - it was as though my body was struggling to maintain itself in this state, let alone repair efficiently. 
- CONSTANT SINUS INFECTIONS: I started to experience regular sinus infections that felt like they would just never actually go away, they were just so consistent. 
- IMMUNITY PROBLEMS: I became that person that was "always sick" when something was going around because I would always catch it, and then seem to take twice as long as others to recover. 
- SWOLLEN/TENDER LYMPH NODES: My lymph nodes often became noticeably extra swollen and tender to the touch much too regularly over these years. 


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Thank you if you made it to the end of this - this is not an easy share to put in a nutshell. 

I will continue to speak on this, spread awareness and advocate for the women who still suffer in silence and in darkness with Breast Implant Illness for so long as I am breathing. BII changed the course of my life. 

I share this journey from a place of deep vulnerability, as speaking out about this publicly is actually one of the hardest things I've ever done. It's incredibly personal, incredibly intimate, partly embarrassing and parts of this have been wrapped up in layers of deep shame - for the stigmas attached to cosmetic surgery, mental health, disability and struggle...I have felt fearful of divulging some of my darkest moments to the trolls of the internet.
I am learning though that I am not a victim for sharing my story, but a survivor setting the world on fire with my truth.

Please help me light the way for others by sharing this story. 

Thank you for being here. Thank you for your support. 

Spread the word Xx