In my last blog, I shared about how I had wanted my breast implants removed for many years, but never prioritized it, mostly because of the cost. And I shared how I learned about Breast Implant Illness (BII) in October of this year, which led me to re-examine my priorities. This landed me having my implants explanted to spot number one on my list.
When I returned home from Iceland on October 1st of this year, I never ever would have imagined I’d close the year out minus those two toxic bags sitting inside of my chest. I thought Iceland was my last “biggie” of the year. Yet, here I am, implant-free.
Learning about BII also meant realizing that I have many of the symptoms on the list of issues that can be caused by the breakdown of silicone in your body (BII). I learned that even though my implants were the “safe” saline type, that all breast implants are made of a silicone shell; none of them are safe. That new knowledge, along with the fact that my implants were nearing their twenty-eighth year of residency inside of me, therefore near certainty that the silicone shell had at least started to break down, shifted me into high gear.
I had done my research on surgeons, narrowed down to the ones who perform an en bloc implant removal (removal of the implant as well as the capsule the body forms around it as one unit) in my home state, and scheduled a consultation within two weeks of learning about BII. The fake titties had received their eviction notice.
My consult was on November 8th, and my surgery was scheduled for December 3rd. Everything fell into place seamlessly. I have a very dear friend who lives in Atlanta, which is where I was having surgery, and she offered to be my person for the big event. She and her husband gave me the entire top floor of their beautiful home to utilize as my recovery retreat. She drove me to surgery and back to her place after. She was a Godsend.
I was pleasantly surprised at how well I felt for the rest of the day after the procedure. I was essentially pain-free, and although my range of motion in my arms was not full, I could move them easily and do all of the things I needed to do – it was much different when the implants moved in, as I could barely lift my arms from my side for what my memory shares being about two weeks.
I had surgical drains, inserted at the crease underneath each breast. I later dubbed them “two hand grenades hanging from my titties”, but I was still naïve about them on day one. I was naïve about a lot of things those first few days. I felt well and had zero pain. It wasn’t until I was back home and back to work that the reality of it all slapped me in the face.
Just the paraphernalia became overwhelming. Jackson-Pratt drains that began inside of my chest, exited via a long tube that went from the underside of each breast down to each thigh with a bulb on the end that was the same shape and size of a hand grenade, hence the hand grenades hanging from my titties. It only took one careless clipping of the grenade to my clothing for me to realize that carelessness allows gravity to have her way with them. And when she shows up, and that grenade falls from mid-chest level to thigh level by her harsh pull, my titty will indeed explode … in pain, that is.
Those fucking things are also very needy, requiring way too much care and coddling. Daily dressing changes around the insertion site, “milking” of the tubing to clean out any clots or clumps hindering the flow of drainage, emptying each grenade twice daily, and measuring its contents. They even had to have their own clothes in the form of a belt that wrapped around my waist with a pouch for each grenade. The tubing had to be carefully tucked into my pants – which also meant the use of extreme caution anytime I had to go to the bathroom because an accidental grab of a tube while pulling my pants down would trigger another explosion.
And showering with those fuckers? That meant wearing a mesh bag that hung around my neck, with each grenade tucked neatly inside. It was all just too much after a while and I could not wait to get them out. But I had to keep them at least until my post-op appointment, which meant having them for a minimum of eight days.
There was a lot of other paraphernalia, too. Syringes (to measure the grenade juice), gauze, paper tape, alcohol pads, a breast binder … so much stuff. I’m a creature of habit, and I can say that as of today, twelve days in, I am ready for my days to be back to normal. And they are getting there, but slowly.
I got back home on a Friday, three days after surgery. I cannot remember whether it was that first Sunday or that first Monday being home, but one of those nights, I was getting into bed. Sleep wasn’t happening much because I had to sleep on my back and at a forty-five-degree angle every night. While trying to get myself situated without utilizing my chest muscles, I was leaning into my right elbow to try and scoot myself up some in the bed when I felt the most horrific pain shoot across my right chest. It felt like I had just shredded muscle apart in there. It was the first pain I had felt since surgery. I had soreness in my chest up until that point, but never any pain. That was six or seven days ago now and I still have that pain – it never went away, although as of last night, it does seem to be subsiding.
With that injury came a lot of extra drainage into my right grenade. For days. During my virtual post-op appointment this past Wednesday, I told the provider (I am not sure who she was – either a PA, NP, or maybe even just the surgeon’s nurse) about it. I asked her about the extent of muscle repair done on me during surgery and she couldn’t answer because my op note had not yet been dictated – eight days after surgery. Not only that, she told me that he is about three weeks behind on his op notes.
Yall! Hear me on this! I make a living abstracting excruciatingly minute details from medical records. And although I no longer practice hands-on patient care nursing, I did for a lot of years, and I can tell you that there is NO way you can remember important details of a patient encounter if you don’t document them soon after. I don’t care how smart or superhuman you think you are, you 100% will be documenting inaccurate information and not painting an accurate picture if you wait three weeks and countless patient encounters later to do it. Having said that, I now know that I will never know exactly what he did inside of my chest as far as muscle repair goes. Nor will he. What I do know is that I hurt something in there and it hasn’t felt right since then.
Anywho, I digress. I was told during that post-op visit that I could go ahead and pull the drain from the left, but I needed to wait at least two more days for the one on the right, as the drainage output needed to be below a certain amount for two days in a row. I also got the all-clear to start sleeping on my side again! WOOHOO!!!
I pulled the drain on the left shortly after the visit was over. I’m just going to leave it at this: it was an extremely unpleasant and difficult experience. But once it was out, I felt like a new woman having freedom from the grenade on that side.
The next morning, my right drain had next to zero drainage in it. By the time I’d finished working, there was still barely any drainage. That fact, along with the fact that I kept thinking over and over how even the patient charts I work in daily for open heart surgery cases don’t even have drains in as long as I have meant I was pulling that last drain that day, no matter what. Hell, a lot of plastic surgeons don’t even use drains with explant surgery. It was just time.
Getting the right drain out was significantly worse in several ways than getting the left one out was. The sutures were pretty far inside and I had a lot of trouble (which is putting it mildly) getting them out. Come to find out, the problem was that the drains had been in too long and my skin had grown too much around the sutures at that point for an easy removal. Yeah. It sucked. But the drain is gone, the sutures are out, and I am officially now free of both hand grenades for three days today. However, I still have to keep a dressing over the drain site on the right because that wound has not yet closed all the way and is still draining.
But now for the good stuff! My implants are out and I want to shout it from the rooftops!! Those closest to me have heard me talk about wanting them gone for so many years now. And I have a love that is absolute for my new/old boobies! They are small, natural, and cute as can be. I was concerned about having loose skin once the implants were out, but the human body is amazing. There is none. Zero loose skin.
The binder I’ve been wearing since the day of surgery helps as well. I will wear it for a minimum of four weeks. Not only does it help the body seal off the empty space between the muscle and ribs where the implants so rudely lived for so long, but it also helps the natural breast tissue go back to its natural position – a process they call “fluffing”, where the breasts continue to fill out over weeks to months following the explant. I don’t mind wearing the binder so far, and I find it comforting. But I’m looking forward to just wearing a normal bra.
My implants were in ok shape. They were sticky, which implies the silicone had indeed started breaking down. But because the capsule was removed as one unit with the implant, nothing spilled into my chest cavity. The left implant has calcification on it, which explains the pain I was having the last few years in that breast. Also, my implants were overfilled, as evidenced by a scalloping of the edges, and the left one was bigger than the right one. Another surprise was the color of my implants – they were filled with a dark brown substance, which I was later told was likely betadine as a lot of older surgeons used to put betadine in them around the timeframe when I got my implants. Until that was explained to me, I was completely freaked out about the color as I assumed it meant something horrible.
Today, I am happy, I am healing, and I am in love with my new/old body. I look forward to seeing if any of my other potential BII symptoms improve or go away completely over time. One other thing that was improved was my blood pressure. It has been consistently normal ever since I had the explant. I’ve had high blood pressure for many years (since my twenties), and although I’d finally been able to get it better controlled naturally over the last year, I did still have to take medication for it usually a few days a week. But I haven’t needed it at all since surgery. I’ve long felt that inflammation in my body was contributing to it being high, and have done a lot with my diet to clear out as much inflammation as I could. But having those implants living inside of me no doubt kept my body with some level of inflammation at all times. So, if this surprise with my blood pressure ends up being a lasting thing, that alone is worth having them removed for.
I’m looking forward to the new year, mostly because on January 1st, I will be allowed my lifelong evening relaxation ritual of a bubble bath again. In the meantime, I will share anything share-worthy about my journey, though I suspect from here on out will be smooth sailing and continuous improvement.
Merry Christmas, happiest of holidays, and Happy New Year to you all. And, as always, please reach out if you have any questions or need resources related to BII. I am happy to help, and that’s the reason I decided to share this journey publicly. I’m here if you need me.
