My BII Story

When I was in my early 20s, I started to get painful lumps in my breast. Lumps large enough that I would get comments when I was with guys. I wanted to have them removed but didn’t want my already small breasts to be smaller. A friend suggested implants, and so my journey began. I thought I should get a small increase while I was at it, but my plastic surgeon insisted that he knew what he was doing and because of my wide shoulders and hips (which I do not have), they would need to be larger. We disagreed with this even as I lay on the operating table. I woke up with size D breasts. In 2000, he implanted Mentor smooth saline 475cc—overfilled to 505c—over the muscle to be precise. I was devastated at my appearance, but felt like there was nothing I could do. The surgery was very difficult for me, and my recovery was long. I couldn’t even look at myself for over a year, and 19 years later, I still don’t feel all that comfortable in my own skin.

Less than a year later, my first symptom appeared, but I had no way to connect it to the implants. Dry eyes—my doctor said that I, at only 26, had the eyes of a 90-year-old. She couldn’t explain how it happened but thought it might be caused by allergies. I never had problems with allergies up until then, but it seemed plausible. I adjusted to putting a cream on my eyes at night and went on about my life. Shortly after that, I started to have reoccurring sinus infections and ear infections. Still, there was no reason to think that me being sick most of the time with chronic infections meant I was having problems with my implants.

When I turned 28 (just 3 years after implants), I got my first autoimmune related diagnosis—psoriasis. There were itchy red patches on my scalp that started to creep down onto my face. During my appointment, the doctor asked if anyone in my family had a history of autoimmune diseases. When I told her that my brother has asthma, she explained that autoimmune diseases were hereditary and that’s probably why I had psoriasis.

Within the next few years, other problems started to occur. Problems like interstitial cystitis, asthma, migraines, severe insomnia, etc. I had to stop working out because I didn’t have the energy and when I did, I paid for it dearly for a week or so. Each autoimmune disease diagnosed was easier to explain since now I, myself, had already been diagnosed with one. The fact that I was always sick, always at the doctor, never seemed all that weird. Even when I quit my job because it was easier to make doctor appointments, I just chalked up to being stressed or getting older.

I was married just two years after I got my implants, and we started to really try to have a baby when I was 30. It took over two years, multiple rounds of infertility treatments, but I eventually had a little girl. When I finally got pregnant, I felt the most healthy that I had felt in years. I never found out why exactly I couldn’t get pregnant, and after I had my little girl, I didn’t need an answer. Five years later, we tried for another child. After three failed attempts, I was finally pregnant, but lost the baby shortly after.

Six months after the miscarriage, I still couldn’t get off the couch, couldn’t really eat, and when I did, couldn’t keep it down. I originally thought I was depressed from the loss. Then, I started to not be able to think clearly, and even had a hard time coming up with everyday words when I spoke. After a week straight of throwing up every day, I made an appointment with my GI. It took months to get in for an upper GI scope, and in the meantime, I felt like I was wasting away into nothing. I felt like I was dying. When I finally got scoped, I woke up to find out that I had celiac disease. They took tissue for biopsy, but I wouldn’t need to wait. It was undeniable. My intestines were completely smooth, meaning that nothing I was eating was being absorbed by my body. It would be a long road to recovery, but a celiac specialist assured me that I would feel better in a couple of years when my body healed itself.

That never happened. I still couldn’t work out, I losing strength, I still had problems with thinking that interfered with my current job as a real estate agent and investor. I got hurt very easily. It didn’t surprise me when I started having lower back problems, after over a decade of severe upper back and neck pain. No amount of stretches or strengthening helped. I ended up having a bulging disc in my lower back causing horrible pain down both of my legs. Around this time, I also started having joint pains in most of my joints, but especially in my hands daily. I saw a rhumatologist and a neurologist, gave hundreds of vials of blood, a spinal tap, and nerve biopsies chasing down symptoms of pain, chronic fatigue, migraines, and memory problems.

I felt like I was going insane. The doctors certainly didn’t help. One after another told me it was stress, fibromyalgia, asthma, and so on. They wrote prescriptions to mask symptoms that came with debilitating side effects. I had to quit my job again and find another way to work—a way that would allow me to work from bed since I could no longer sit or stand for long. I spent hours and hours online looking for answers. I even thought maybe it was linked to my implants, but my searches only ever returned results for problems with silicone implants. I knew I had the safe kind—saline.

Now a single mom, I could no longer afford to chase symptoms, to spend more money on finding answers to questions that doctors felt was ultimately in my head. I am extremely thankful that at this time in my life, I found a partner that helped me through all of these appointments, someone that stood solidly behind me as we listened to doctors chastise me. Eventually, he helped me to come to the realization that I need to at least get a breast reduction to ease my back problems that had become so painful that I couldn’t sleep or breathe well. It would be a hard, expensive surgery but it was far overdue and I needed it badly.

In the spring of 2019, I reached out to friends for recommendations and setup consultations. My daughter would be gone all summer long and my boyfriend would happily take care of me, so I was hoping to have surgery that coming summer. However, as I was reading about one of the doctors I was going to see in a mom’s group on Facebook, a woman said, “Have you looked into BII?”

The rest of my story can be found in this blog. I am set to explant on July 17, 2019.