Breast Explant

WELCOME! This is one page I am so excited that you are on. If you would have told me 18 years ago that I would be cheering women on to remove their breast implants and grateful to be rid of my own, I wouldn't have believed it. I spent my teenage years hating my body - I felt betrayed by it for doing all the wrong things. I had hyperhydrosis (constant sweaty hands), thick black hair on my legs, a misshaped nose, no curves and flat as flat could be. I got teased for all of the above and would cry myself to sleep, praying (literally) to God to finally let my boobs grow! Well, they never did and I developed the belief that I had to have a stellar personality to make-up for all the things my physical appearance. In other words, I was not enough as I was. 

 After I went through a divorce, I decided to do something for me and get a boob job. I can't help but shake my head at that line of reasoning - that cutting myself open and 'permanently' implanting chemical bags under the most precious and sensitive part of my body was doing something for me; that I deserved it and because it would "make me happy," it was a wonderful move. I grimace a little every time I hear women cheer each other on with, "do what makes you happy" and some sort of surgery, filler or injection is connected to it. Will it make you happy? YES, on the surface. BUT, and this is a big one, it doesn't solve the problem that you lead you to the operating table in the first place - that you don't love yourself as you are, imperfection, blemishes and an aging body and all. And, that voice inside you that points out your imperfections, doesn't go away once you 'fix' something; it simply focuses on your next imperfection. A boob job leads to lipo, leads to botox, to lip injections, to starvation diets, to whatever it may be that will keep you chasing beauty and worth based on what society sells it as. 

At some point, those breast implants WILL have to come out either when they make you so sick you can barely walk and your hair falls out, because they are ruptured, because you develop capsular contracture and then you are right back where you started - a scarred, flawed human being. When I say that, it sounds kind of horrible - the flawed human being part. But what if I could help you embrace that fact? I often say that God created you beautiful and perfect just as you are. The caveat to that is yes, He created you perfectly to be an imperfect human on this earth. Take a minute to let that sink in. Perfection does not exist - you can't attain it and you aren't intended to. The goal here is to learn and grow and to love as Christ loved. No guilt, no shame (we get very good at doing that to ourselves), just learn from our mistakes and always strive to be better. As for this body of ours, God gave us exactly what we need and no one else's opinion of us matters - not the punk kid from 5th grade, not some hot guy we went out with and were then rejected by, not a surgeon, not a doctor, not a parent, not even a spouse. The last one took you off guard a little didn't it. If we base our worth on anything other than God's opinion, we will never quite be enough. When your worth is based on His opinion alone, now we move into a different space. But I've digressed...

I was 25 when I got my saline implants. I got them under the muscle and kept them pretty small as I just wanted to look and feel 'proportional' and to just have something; to feel like a woman. Recovery was rough and they felt heavy on my chest. But they did in fact make the lifelong issue I had with my chest, a non-issue. Funny enough, I never showed them off in anything I wore and the only human that has ever seen them is my husband. I did it for 'me,' and I loved them. Some time not too long after I developed a strange issue with my ears - I would lose hearing, my ear would become super sensitive to sound and I'd hear a constant humming. It would be like this for 24-48 hours, go away for a day, then come back. I'd deal with this cycle for weeks or months at a time, then it would go away for six months before returning. I could never get in to see a doctor because it was so random. The one time I did get into an ENT, they noted that I had decreased hearing loss in my ear at the time, but everything else looked fine and they had no answer for me. 

At about year eleven, one of my implants was little hard, while the other remained soft. I went to a surgeon to look at replacing them as it was recommended to me to replace them every ten or so years. Honestly ladies, why do we not hear that and immediately think - forget it?! Surgery every ten years? Oh our poor bodies and pocket books! Since my last surgery, silicone had been put back on the market and deemed as totally safe and they just felt so much more real! I decided to go for it and upped the size going to 400 and 425 CC's. A couple months later, my right implant became hard as a rock; it was so painful some days I cried and felt helpless. This is when I learned about capsular contracture; a condition where the scar tissue that forms around the breast begins to contract around the implant. Seven months after that initial replacement, I replaced the right implant. A month or so later, my left implant began to contract. I paniced and found a chiro that did massage work on women with capsular contracture. Eventually it softened and I had to then do the same to the right one again. I was clearly missing the hint that my body did not want these implants.

About a year or so into my silicone implants, I realized one day that my hair was falling-out. My once thick and beautiful hair and thinned to nothing. I was also absolutely exhausted all the time, I could no longer ski for longer than two hours as the pain in my joints was so bad and the ear thing (which I realized was a form of tinnitus) re-surfaced. I had blood work done that showed my body was moving toward perimenopause - I was 39. I found some products that helped grow my hair back and give me a boost in my energy, and then 2020 rolled around and I got Covid. I'll spare you the details but I became a 'long hauler.' I lost my taste and smell for four solid months, with it to return slowly and completely distorted. I was having hot flashes and I was putting on weight. More blood work and everything came back glowing. Frustrated with never getting answers from traditional medicine, I sought out a holistic practitioner. We peeled back the layers in my body and while some things improved, the inflammation, heavy metals and other issues were always there. 

One day, my friend sent me some articles on breast implants. I was horrified by what I was reading and decided that it was time to take a close look at them with my practitioner (I had never mentioned it as I didn't want them to be the problem - but knowing that Covid is very much about high levels of inflammation in the body, I knew deep-down that my implants were at the root). As she worked on me and I opened my mouth to say, "Okay, I've got breast implants - let's take a hard look at them)," she was looking at what was coming back and she looked me in the eyes shocked and said, "Do you have breast implants?!" The timing was shocking. I pretty much knew at that moment that that was the beginning of the end. I did more research and very quickly decided that I couldn't get these things out of me fast enough. I also realized that they were most likely the cause of my hair loss, joint pain, exhaustion, brain fog and tinnitus. I couldn't even believe what these things had been doing inside of my body. I also was terrified - I was now faced with going back to unworthy, flat Brittany who would now have scars to boot. 

I squared-up my shoulders and got prayin'! I prayed for God to help me get through this and to learn how to love my body scars, dimples, wrinkles, fat and all. And when I walked into surgery on December 9th, 2022, I was ready. I was scared don't get me wrong, I hate surgery, I hate recovering from surgery, but the last thing my husband said to me before they walked me back was, "It's going to be okay - you're right where you need to be." Ohhhh, that was inspired right there! I felt peace and I was so excited for this next step in my journey. 

So, whether you are here, to begin your own journey, just barely considering explant, considering implants, whatever it may be, I'm here for you! I would love to answer your questions or just listen. I'm wrapping-up a program I've been working on to help women prepare for and heal after explant. I've also prepared a program for women who simply want to learn to love themselves and accept themselves just as they are. Below, I've included some of the basics of what I did to prepare for explant and some recommendations I have to help you get through recovery post-surgery.