Hi my name is Anna, I am a single 36 year old woman and have been living on disability for 6 years. I have been ill for a total of 12. I am reaching out to you today with a heartfelt desperate appeal.

In 2011 I had my first set of breast implants surgically implanted. Five years later I had them removed and replaced multiple times as my body kept rejecting them and after some time the implants became warped in shape and went rock hard causing immense pain. This is called capsular contraction which is when your body rejects and reacts to the implants and forms a thick protective capsule around the implant which constricts them from having movement. The final time they were replaced using a different surgical technique as my surgeon had said that would lower the chance of capsular contraction happening again. That was not the case and my health took a toll as i was bedridden and found myself not being able to function with even simple daily tasks. I had the implants removed permanently a short time after when i started doing research and came across an article listing most if not all symptoms that i was experiencing. I realized I had breast implant illness. I presented this information to my surgeon. He came to the conclusion that it was due to breast implant illness and within 5 days (as emergency surgery) he removed my implants, he did something called a full capsulectomy. They removed the implant and the capsule around it. He didn’t do a special surgery that is needed in the case of breast implant illness, or breast cancer which is called an ‘Enbloc’. They remove the implant and the capsule in one piece, scrape out your chest wall , and there is nothing left behind in your body to make you sick. That specific surgery was not done on me and my chest was not scraped out. my surgeon said he didn’t want to do it for me because ‘I wouldn’t like how it looked after’ and basically talked me out of it. The surgeon I am dealing with now for my explant has told me There is more than likely capsule left inside of my chest wall. I have had my breast implants removed almost 4 years ago now. After removing them I got slightly better to the point where I wasn’t bedridden anymore but it brought me back to what I was like just before that. With all of the horrible symptoms and over the past four years, they have worsened and I am becoming close to being bedridden again. I have no quality of life, and I am afraid this is slowly killing me. In fact, I know it is.

After five months of having my very 1st set in, I started to develop symptoms. What surgeons do not tell you is that there is something called breast implant illness ‘BII’ it’s a real thing that I have been plagued with that has horrible symptoms which can be summarized by fatigue, anxiety, chronic pain and exacerbation of endocrine, autonomic and peripheral nervous system function.

In layman terms, my body is completely attacking itself, and is completely dysfunctional in all aspects. It is extremely debilitating and makes daily life very hard to manage. I haven’t worked in a decade. My family doctor, as well as my surgeon along with other specialists had been trying to figure out what was wrong with me for years to the point where they put me on disability for all the different things that I was suffering from. I do suffer from many symptoms. I can’t sleep I can’t digest food properly. I get skin rashes I have hair loss and thinning due to hormonal imbalance. I have extreme menstrual issues which I cannot go into detail about but it has not allowed me to have children and has caused me to have multiple miscarriages when I have so badly wanted to be a mother for many years.

I take medication for my nerve pain disorder every day and have to take a powder supplement to help build connective tissue in my body, which hasn’t seemed to be really working as I suffer in pain every day almost all day. I suffer from nerve joint and muscle pain. I have migraines, neck pain, pain In my knees. as well as I have constant subluxations and dislocations of joints. I have multiple injuries from joints popping out of place from the connective tissue disease.My joints have become so loose that my wrist bone popped out of place and was bone bone with my hand bone. It was extremely painful and had to have surgery to shorten the bone in my forearm and pull it down from the wrist and attach it with a plate and screws. Because of my slow wound healing from breast implant illness my arm did not heal and remained as a fracture for 4 WHOLE years. And was held In place by a metal plate and screws.

I had the surgery redone after the four year marks My surgeon, then redid the surgery on my arm but this time he did a bone marrow transplant to help aid in healing. The bone marrow transplant was from my hip and so they did an operation on my hip at the same time as my arm. They cut a piece of my bone off of my hip, extracted the marrow and put it into my arm. The hip surgery was extremely painful. It was more painful than my arm had been both times and I couldn’t walk for 3 weeks. Even with the bone marrow transplant, it took my arm and entire year to heal. this is the second metal plate I have in my arm which means if I am having a reaction to it it’s affecting me more this second time around . I believe my body is also having an auto immune response to the foreign object that is the plate in my arm. I will have to have that removed as soon as possible. Thankfully that’s covered !

I’m reaching out today in hopes that you will hear my plea and help to raise funds for my surgery that is not covered under OHIP as breast implant illness is not currently a recognized illness in Canada. They are working on making it a recognized illness and also working on making it mandatory for surgeons to hand out a pamphlet with information regarding breast implant illness at the breast augmentation consultation. Once it becomes a recognized illness, someday…. These types of surgeries will hopefully then be covered.

I have suffered for a very long time, and I would just like to have my life back. I would like to have a child and a family. I would just like the energy to be able to get up in the day and have one day without severe body pain. Thank you for listening to my story I know it was very long but hopefully this could raise awareness

God bless you all.