Breast Implant Illness and What You Need to Know (Part 1)
Before January of 2019, I had never heard of BII (Breast Implant Illness) and within a week’s span of time, I came across the term three times. THREE!
The first one came from an Instagram post I saw from a girl I’d been following for a couple of months. She shared a post holding up her breast implants. She talked about the symptoms she’d been having and decided that her implants needed to go. Plus, the FDA had just declared months prior to her explant that there was a form of cancer called BIA-ALCL linked to breast implants.
The reason my ears perked up was that she mentioned skin issues and joint pain/inflammation as a couple of her symptoms which I also had which had been super frustrating for me. I ate super healthy 80% of the time, exercised regularly and should be in primo health. Not so much.
Another image popped up in my IG feed a few days later of another woman talked about getting her implants out. WTH? I go 11 years hearing nothing then within a few days, I see it again.
I had an appointment scheduled with a naturopath a few days later to take some tests, mainly to get some testing done to see where my health really stood and also to help me figure out what my random issues were all about.
When testing was done and we sat down to talk, I asked her, “Do you think any of these things could be caused by my breast implants?”
She answered, “Funny you should say that. I have another patient with some similar symptoms who did some research and found a website site called Healing Breast Implant Illness as well as a Facebook group. I think it may be worth looking into.”
I was stunned. There were now THREE mentions of this in less than two weeks of time. I have to think it was one of those Godwink moments. It took the close proximity of me hearing about BII that I snapped to attention.
I got home and googled the site, as well as the FB group. There were 47,000+ women in that group a year ago, which blew my mind. A year later, there are now over 110K.
You guys, I had a lot of shitty healthy issues a lot of my life but they went away when I switched to a healthy lifestyle. All was great and each year I felt like I was learning/doing more to support that. So when old symptoms and new ones started popping up, I was very confused. How does someone who lives healthier than ever start to slide backward? I was so frustrated.
Let me give a rundown of all the random symptoms I’ve had that have popped up for me over the last three years.
poor focus
forgetfulness (more than the norm)
low libido with random spikes
skin rash across chest
pain/burning sensation in chest
headaches (years without having them)
unexplained weight gain
irregular menstrual cycle
crazy mood swings (severe depression one day and totally fine the next)
dry eyes
brittle and easily damaged hair/nails
night sweats
slow healing wounds
leaky gut symptoms like seasonal allergies and food intolerance
decline in vision (I’ve got astigmatism and I’ve had the same prescription for YEARS)
low white blood cell count (indicates an infection somewhere but unable to determine where)
throat clearing
estrogen/progesterone imbalance
achy joints
lower back pain
liver toxicity (testing with naturopath revealed liver was struggling to detox and this was AFTER I had be alcohol free for four months)
When I started looking at the list from the BII website, I had these little flashbacks as I realized I had so many of these things listed. I never connected the dots and most women don’t. And the sad thing is my symptoms are nothing compared to some women. Some have hivey rashes all over their body that NEVER GO AWAY, or severe depression, heart palpitations, severe fatigue, panic attacks, autoimmune issues/disease, severe hair loss and so on.
If you look at my list, you may think that most of those things are due to the aging process. People, I was in my early 40s and living healthier than I’d ever been—except during football and post-season baseball…those times were a bit off the mark. This was like whack-a-mole of symptom control. Something always seemed to be popping up and after a while, I was even discounting it as the “perks” of getting older.
After seeing the evidence and reading the testimonials, I decided I need to talk to a plastic surgeon. There are recommended surgeons to go to in each state based on their experience removing implants with the capsule intact (called en bloc/total capsulectomy). This ensures that any tissue that surrounds the implant will be removed and keep from any material from leaking further if it was ruptured implant. There are very few in my area. However, I found out that a friend of mine was in this FB group and had posted that she had a consult with a doctor not on the list and scheduled her surgery. Between travel for spring break and our crazy baseball season, I knew I’d have to wait until after the summer was over to pursue this.
Until then, I kept up with Facebook posts and did all I could to keep everything as clean as possible so that I didn’t exacerbate my symptoms. Summer came and went, my friend had her surgery and loved her results, and I held back still. I’ve had my implants for almost 12 years at that point while I knew what the right thing to do was, it’s still hard to pull the trigger.
November came and I finally found the courage to schedule a consult. He did NOT say he didn’t believe in BII but he also said you may not feel better after they are out then paused and said, “but you probably will.”
I’m breaking this up into two posts because I want you to read this. This is your godwink. This is the tap on the shoulder to pay attention. If you or any of your friends/family/coworkers have any of these symptoms and they also have breast implants, please share this with them. People and/or doctors have probably told them they are overreacting, hypochondriacs, misdiagnosing them or that they’re just getting old.
Share this post on your FB page, your Twitter, send an email to your besties with fake breasties; be the godwink for someone else. I am so, so grateful for the women I saw on Instagram and Nicole from Healing Breast Implant Illness and all the women in the FB group for sharing their stories when it all could’ve been so easily kept to themselves.
Part 2 will be covering my surgery and recovery so stay tuned for Friday’s post!