Testimonies

Date: Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 07:17:48 -0700

Here is my story:

I want to tell of my experiences with my saline implants. They were McGhan, 450cc,overfilled to 500cc, under the muscle, put in on May 23, 1997. I want others contemplating surgery to understand what can and does happen with the so called "safe" saline implant.

Only a little more than two and a half years ago, my life was completely normal, and I was completely healthy. Now, I am living with health that was destroyed.

After a career in management and the birth of my last two children, I had the fortune to become a stay at home mom, which was very important to me. However, I was not happy with my figure after breast feeding 4 children, and so I started saving money in 1996 to get implants. I worked for a year as a waitress, saving up the money I needed to get the implants, a sacrifice to my family. I had wanted them for years, and did my research, watching the 20/20 shows on TV, reading any news articles I could find about them (all positive) and I went to the library and checked out whatever books I could find (there weren't many at that time). I waited until my last baby was finally done breast feeding, and then I made an appointment with a very highly regarded plastic surgeon in town. I had a good friend who had implants for 8 years and she was very satisfied with them. Seeing her happiness made me want to go ahead and get the implants. My husband went with me to the doctor's office, and we asked about the risks, and we were told that they were very safe, that the chance of having any problems was very very small (like 1 or 2 percent. This is what the doctor said, but where did he get that information? There are no registries....?), and that the implants would "go with me to the grave". We both were looking forward to a very good outcome. We joked about how good I would look even when I was old and in a nursing home.

I had the surgery on May 23, 1997, and I did very well. I had no complications from the surgery. I went from an A cup to a D cup. My husband loved my new figure, as did I, of course!! We went shopping for bras together, new clothes, we had a wonderful new sex life, I was the happiest I had ever been in my life. I felt that my life was now finally what I had always dreamed it would be. I was extremely healthy, active, financially secure, I felt beautiful and was told I was, I felt totally blessed in my life. What more could I ask for? My girlfriend and I became even closer because we shared our implant experience.

Then my world crashed. In January 1998, I became frighteningly and alarmingly ill. I thought I was getting Multiple Sclerosis or something, because my vision became disturbed. My head felt funny. I couldn't concentrate on simple things, like paying bills, watching TV or reading. I was extremely tired. Mentally, I was laboring, my head was in a fog all the time. I couldn't care for the kids or the house. I had night sweats and sleep disturbances. My husband asked, "do you think it is the implants?" I blew that off--no, it wasn't the implants! I went to three doctors, and had blood work done, and they found nothing. I was told that I was suffering from clinical depression and anxiety. This made absolutely no sense to me. I was happier than I had ever been!! Of course, my implanting plastic surgeon reassured me that the implants were the safest on the market.

We got on the Internet, and we found that other women with implants were experiencing the same things as I was. Of course, I didn't want to believe it. I fought it. I wanted to keep my lovely implants! I cried so many tears, I soaked my pillows. I went to another highly regarded, very ethical, plastic surgeon in a larger city 2 and a half hours away from my home, and there I was told that I should get the implants out, and that I should see a rheumatologist. He believed, through his experiences with patients, that implants definately are causing some serious problems.

The truth was, the implants were hurting me, and I had only had them 8 months. I could not believe this was happening to me. I cried out to God to not let this be, to let me keep the implants. But I knew that if I wanted to get better, I had to do this very hard thing. This was the most heart-wrenching experience of my life--my joy since having the implants had turned into my worst nightmare in only a matter of months.

I got the implants out on February 27, 1998, and blood tests from a rheumatologist showed that I had an elevated rheumatoid factor, as well as a lowered C3 Complement, and macrocytosis. Before I had the implants, I hadn't been sick in over 10 years!! The rheumatologist told me that I was a very smart woman for having gotten the implants out.

He also ordered a brain MRI, which he told me was normal, but upon reading the radiologists report myself, found it to say the following:

"Mild prominence of superior cerebellar sulci, significance uncertain. Suggest clinical correlation."

"There is mild prominence of sulci over the superior cerebellar hemispheres bilaterally, of uncertain significance. This may indicate a mild degree of cerebellar atrophy considering the patient's age."

There is no doubt that the implants were harming me in a terrible, terrible way. It has now been almost 2 years since explant, and I have no more fatigue, my mind is much clearer, I am active and feel good most of the time. I still suffer from occasional brain fog and pray that I do not have permanent neurological damage. The rheumatologist claimed that the rheumatoid factor (elevated to 117 in April 1998, and 159 in August 1998) will return to normal over time. I have not been retested, but feel certain that the rheumatoid factor has improved, as my health has. I have been working so hard to get my health back.

The cost of this experience has been enormous. Obviously, there is the financial cost. I paid $3500 in cash for the implants. The cost to remove them has been much higher than that. I paid the explanting surgeon a total of $3000, plus the hospital bill ran into many more thousands. Of course, there was the cost of medical

doctors, clothes, travel, lost time from work, vitamins and supplements, and organic and healthier foods to try to regain my health. I have never seen the MRI bill but am aware that it was well over one thousand dollars.

There has been the cost to my family--my children suffering the loss of their healthy, active, caring mother, which brings me the most pain. They have witnessed me unable to take care of the house, not having the energy to do things with them, play with them, cook meals every single day, even talk with them, as my mental capacity diminished, and I didn't have the energy to search for the right words for them! My husband has suffered the loss of his caring, nuturing wife, and instead has had to be the emotional strength for a family of 6, besides going to work every day to keep us financially secure.

I am not even going to discuss the cost to me emotionally, except to say that it has been the worst nightmare in my entire life, and I would give anything not to have gone through this.

There is the future cost of this nightmare as well to consider. Will my body ever fully recover from the effects of the silicone shell I allowed to be inserted into my body? Will I get cancer in my breasts someday because of this, or a brain tumor, or will I get a full-blown autoimmune disease? These unanswered questions remain unwelcome visitors to me daily.

I am finding out that my future health insurance could be in jeopardy. My husband opened his own business, where we have to buy our own health insurance, and I have found that insurance companies deny or severely limit coverage to women who have implants or had breast implant surgery within a 5 to 10 year time frame. When will this nightmare end? How long will I pay for the deception I experienced?

I was led to believe by my implanting plastic surgeon that my implants would "fix" my post-childbearing figure, that the chances of them causing disease was miniscule, that they would go with me to my grave! He was promising me a lifetime of happiness in exchange for my hard earned $3500.

Instead, I got 8 months of pleasure, and then destroyed health, more surgery, huge medical bills, pain and loss to my children and husband, loss of work, and loss of future health coverage. There was no mention of these risks. I have also been left with huge red scars underneath my breasts, some loss of nipple sensation, and an area of numbness in one breast. The cost has been way too great.

I do not consider the little he told me about implants to indicate "informed consent" in any way. If he had told me that neurologically I was at risk, there would have been no way that I would have gotten implants. Would any woman in her right mind risk the integrity of her brain or central nervous system function for a larger bust???? NO!! If he would have told me that insurance companies deny women with implants coverage, I would have not done this! But nowhere in my research about implants was any of this indicated.

The fact is, that getting implants is a Russian Roulette, and the so called "safe" saline implant is not safe. There is no such thing as a safe breast implant. These are inferior products, and need to be removed from the market. I know that the medical option for breast reconstruction exists and is desired, and that women everywhere will want to enlarge their breasts for their self-esteem, but breast implants themselves are not life saving devices and are totally unnecessary and dangerous to health and wellbeing. They are costly to our society! I think we need to go back to square one, and find a safe and sane alternative. I think our only hope now is in tissue cloning.

In the event that saline implants are approved for market use, the FDA will be negligent if they do not require, by law, mandatory disclosures of the kind of ill effects women have experienced, and warn them of the very serious nature of autoimmune diseases. This should include the opportunity to meet or read stories of other women harmed by implants, and their loss of jobs, career, income, home, family and wellbeing, including life.

Here is the full list of symptoms I experienced during my implant ordeal, almost all of which have now completely resolved, except for the brain fog:

"Brain Fog" feeling of cobwebs and cloudiness in my head, slowed mental functioning, spacy, distant feelings, feeling of inflammation or chemical dysfunction in the brain, accompanied by listlessness and tiredness. Often fall into trance-like mode, or zone out. Feels like I am looking at the world through a bottle.

Eyeball weakness and pain behind eyeballs.

Slowed eye movement.

Bright lights produce eyeball pain.

Cognitive dysfunction.

Saying wrong words.

Slowed information processing.

Memory problems

Muscle weakness

Sleeplessness

Nightsweats

Heart Palpitations

Muscle Twitching

Cold hands and feet

Swollen Lymph glands

Stiff neck, sore on right side

Grinding, debilitating fatigue

Tingling in hands, waking me up at night

Low body temperature

Visual Disturbances

Crawly Feeling in Leg

Joint Pain

Jerky leg movements at night, spasm

Bumped into walls more often

Fire-ant like lesion on skin (one, on chest)

Small red spots all over legs (in first weeks after implant surgery)

Flaking eyelids

TESTS:

Elevated Rheumatoid Factor

Lowered C3 Complement

Macrocytosis

MRI of brain: "Mild prominence of superior cerebellar sulci, significance uncertain. Suggest clinical correlation."

"There is mild prominence of sulci over the superior cerebellar hemispheres bilaterally, of uncertain significance. This may indicate a mild degree of cerebellar atrophy considering the patient's age."