What's up guys? My name is Maddie. 6 months ago,
I got surgery done in mexico to remove my breast implants. Since then, I've gotten dozens upon dozens,
maybe hundreds of comments asking how the heck I'm doing. What are the updates? Today,
I'm going to give you that update of six months later, how I'm feeling,
my symptoms and my health. And the before and after; in terms of the physical appearance.
And in case you haven't seen the first two videos, I'm going to give a little bit of backstory.
Basically, I had breast implants for 3 years. During that time,
my health issues were getting worse and worse, and eventually I realized that they might be caused
by the very breast implants that I decided to put into my body, stupidly.
Anyway,
I did more research into it, went down the internet rabbit hole and learned about something called breast implant
illness and the toxic effects that breast implants can have on the body. Ultimately, I decided removing
my breast implants would be the very best thing for me and my health. And so, I decided to have that surgery and evict them
for good. I truly do hope that my story helps other women out there who might
be unknowingly dealing with health symptoms that they
like me,
had never even considered might be related to breast implants. So, without further ado,
let's get into it. First and most unfortunately, there was definitely some misalignment in the expectations versus reality of this whole situation.
I was part of this group on Facebook about breast implant illness and I was constantly seeing stories from women who basically felt better
immediately after surgery, and so I was hoping and really keeping my fingers crossed that that would be the same thing for me.
It wasn't. It took over 2 months before any positive improvements happened to
my health and during that time, I was thinking
that all my worst fears were confirmed.
There was no point to having gone through with the surgery and spending thousands
of dollars, and the risks of it all and the pain
of it all but thankfully, that's not how the story ends. This is Laska. She was basically knocking on the door.
I think she realized I needed a therapy dog.
Good girl.
So anyway,
I think it took 2 months for me to start noticing any positive improvements to my health because
my body really did undergo so much trauma from that surgery. Dr. Valdez spent hours longer than
we had originally anticipated, trying to scrape out and get all of the scar tissue out.
That's very important because the implants can leech toxins and things into that scar capsule that naturally forms around an implant.
In my case, I had capsular contracture on one side - on this left side. So, that basically means the scar tissue
hardens around the implant because your body is trying to like suffocate it out.
So, all of that added to the extra trauma I experienced.
But thankfully, after 2 months, I did start noticing some positive improvements.
(Laska sneezes) Bless you.
The bulk of my healing and changes to my symptoms happened in months 3 and 4, but I'll get into that in just a minute.
So, as for appearance...
Laska, are you leaving me?
Okay, come to your spot. Come here.
And I know tons of you guys are really curious about my appearance:
How do they look? How did they turn out? And I'll be honest,
at about the 1 week mark, when the bandages came off and everything and I saw what they look like for the first time,
Laska.
at about...
Laska! And I was able to see what everything looked like for the first time,
I was
devastated, to say the least. I
was not happy with the results at all.
And this is kind of to be expected. I was huge with implants in and then
the body needs time to like
re-absorb all that tissue for the implant cavity to heal back into itself and for something called 'fluffing' to happen,
which is basically where the breasts like bounce back and the skin
and the breasts just fluff up again. [Laughs]
but
It was not good at first. There was definitely sagging and
dimpling, and rippling, and it was just like...
Oh my gosh, I was very depressed. I cried and cried, thinking
"Why did I do this to myself in the first place?" "Why did I get these implants?"
"This was such a stupid mistake."
I still think it was a stupid mistake, but that was a very low point for me.
Very low point in the healing, where I was not being patient with my body in
the healing that it needed to do and the time that it needed to take. Thankfully, after 6 months of daily
massaging, (recommended by my surgeon) they do not look that bad anymore
but I'll get into kind of the before and after and even include some video clips and stuff later on in the video. Next,
I'm going to talk about my overall health and symptoms (My health, 6 months after surgery).
I'm so overjoyed to report that so many of my symptoms that I had with implants, I
no longer have. Or they are so much less severe than they were before.
So, some of those include: no back or shoulder pain, lessened fatigue, less anxiety,
not as much brain fog, being able to sleep better and feel more rested when I wake up,
having more energy, a decrease in inflammation,
and
weight loss. I'm not going to go into a ton of details about all these but I think there's
some details worth mentioning.
On a few of these like for instance, back and shoulder pain.
Before getting implants, I had none of that. Or at least the typical stuff
You know, you tweak your back and maybe you pull a muscle here or there, something like that
but nothing major and nothing chronic. As soon as I got implants though, I developed
severe back shoulder and neck pain, constantly.
It didn't matter how many massages or chiropractic visits I went to, it was always there
and I kind of expected that when I would get the implants removed that would go away immediately
but that also was surprisingly not the case. At first, my back was angry,
my muscles were hard as a rock. There was so much pain
in my neck and back. Thankfully, I have my boyfriend,
Jordan,
and he so very kindly gave me massages every single day to loosen those muscles up.
Eventually, once they calmed down and
readjusted to the lack of weight on my chest,
I haven't had any more back trouble, any more back pain since then, which has been
such a miracle. Another huge difference is improvements in fatigue
and there is a little bit about this that I think might have been
existing or not might have, that was existing before I got implants
because I have been dealing with severe mercury poisoning,
heavy metal poisoning for a while now and I was already on a detox protocol for that, that was getting better
but as the detox was noticeably having positive effects, I got implants
and then the fatigue ramped back up again and got worse (along with other symptoms).
So, I do think the implants were a huge factor in the levels of fatigue that I have.
Now, I
do feel rested when I wake up in the morning most of the time. I still do have coffee
but it's not as much as I had before and that's one of the things that I find the craziest
after explant, is that, if I were to drink the amount of coffee I was drinking when I had implants,
I think I would overdose on caffeine or vibrate into a new dimension. On some days, I would have like
a shot of espresso, two lattes, and a cold brew; which is just an absurd,
absolutely
mind-boggling amount of caffeine. Now, I'll have
half a cup of cold brew and be fine or one cup of coffee. Any more than that and I'm like sweating, shaking, clearly
it's too much caffeine. I don't need it. So,
it still blows my mind
how fatigued I was that I could have that amount of caffeine with implants and
not have the effects that caffeine
would have on me now. Another big one is inflammation.
I didn't realize over the course of the 3 years that I had implants
how much inflammation was building in my body
and it got to the point where people were leaving comments on our youtube channel about how
much older I looked than my age. How I looked like an old hag.
People were leaving comments like "Oh, what a great
stepmom-son or mother-son YouTube channel" Talking about me, 27 at the time, and Jordan, 31 at the time.
Those type of comments were really hard to get.
But ultimately, it was obvious at the end of the 3 years
that the implants were aging me, they were aging my skin and they were causing so much inflammation
internally, but it was also really obvious to see on my face and I can say that now,
6 months later when I look at pictures of me
6 months ago compared to now, my eyes are more open,
my skin isn't so red, overall noticeably less inflammation in my face and
fewer wrinkles on my face, like it turned back the clock, praise the Lord.
One thing I started noticing
after explant was that, so many people were commenting saying I was glowing
and that my complexion looks so nice and
I must be feeling better or I look so much better. So, it was
really nice to go from people saying I looked like an old hag to now - I
look so vibrant and my skin is glowing and I feel that too.
I mean,
I look it, which is nice, but I feel that on the inside which is even better. And
I do also think that another thing that I've noticed - the weight loss. There was a lot of weight loss in this region here
but I'm talking about overall. I was about
115 pounds (52.2 kg) I think or so, give or take, when I had implants
and now, I'm around 106 pounds (48.1 kg), which is within the normal range,
pre-implants that I was like
103 to 110 pounds, like I'm right in the middle.
I think a lot of that has to do with inflammation as well and just the weight that was dropped when my body wasn't fighting
so hard, just to exist - just to fight off these foreign invaders of toxic chemicals that were
stuck in my body. And one final symptom I wanted to talk about that has
gotten way better or maybe completely gone away is anxiety.
And this is another one that I didn't really notice was happening
exactly. I didn't realize how much anxiety I was experiencing on a day-to-day basis,
in normal everyday interactions, until I
wasn't experiencing it anymore. And before, I would get so
overwhelmed by emotions during an interaction, or feel really nervous, or get uncomfortable for basically
no reason. Like situations that shouldn't cause you to be embarrassed or nervous or anything
And now I feel nothing or neutral about situations
which is such a relief that I'm not like dreading social interactions anymore. That was one thing that I
don't even really think that I had considered was a symptom because it had just come on so gradually over
such a long period of time, like over 3 years that I didn't notice it until it wasn't there. But I'm very thankful
it's not now. There are a few symptoms that are still persistent
and to name a few: acne, hormonal fluctuations or hormonal imbalances,
and as I look down at my notes because I forgot, memory issues!
But it's only 6 months after I had these implants removed. I had them for 3 years,
so for 3 years of damage to see all these improvements after 6 months, I'm
being patient with myself for the rest to iron itself out. At least, I'm trying anyway.
Now, I'm going to talk about physical appearance, before and after implants.
First of all,
my surgeon recommended that I get an explant with no lift
and that's the route I went which means I only have two incisions - two scars in the
crease of each breast. Like I said before, I did
have some dimpling, ripples, and sagging going on before. But thankfully,
after 6 months of daily massages, they have fluffed up and I don't really have
anything like that going on anymore. They
basically, with one exception that I'll talk about in a minute,
look like they did before, Hallelujah for that.
The only thing that hasn't 100% gone back to normal is that, there is now a ridge,
you might call it, around my left breast
and that's the one that had capsular contracture;
where the scar capsule around the implant hardened. So, I think what happened
is that it sort of pushed the natural area of my breast outward
so then, after the fluffing happened and the healing, and my breasts returned to where it normally
would have been, or where it was before getting implants,
there's still a little bit of that ridge where the implant had pushed the skin out.
It's very possible that that will go away over time and I'm continuing to do massages every single day (again, recommended by my surgeon)
around the scars and around the breast tissue itself to encourage
circulation and any remainder of healing that's left, but to be honest,
it's not a huge deal that I hyper fixate on it or anything. It doesn't look particularly bad.
I don't think you can notice it when I'm wearing a swimsuit or anything. Besides the breast healing itself,
there's also the topic of the scars. I'm pretty pleased with how they have healed.
They're as small as they possibly could have been especially
on the left side, it's a little bit bigger (the scars are uneven because breasts naturally aren't perfectly symmetrical)
but again, that's because there was that capsular contracture and the surgery was a total capsuleectomy
which means the implant is taken out with the capsule around it to make sure everything is taken out
but there's no bumps in the scars. They look pretty nice.
I do hope eventually that they get a little bit lighter and less noticeable
but again, it's only been 6 months, so, lots of healing can happen.
I'm applying Tamanu Oil on them every day. At first, I was doing silicon scar cream
but I actually was noticing it causing bumps on my
skin and
I was conflicted about using that scar cream in the first place because it's like,
why would I take silicon out of my body
just to be applying it on my body, even though that is what's used to heal scars?
But I have noticed a lot of improvements since using the "Tamanu oil" and that's perfectly natural
alternative that I think has been even more effective for me personally. Do I have any regrets? I am
100% positive I'm going to look back on the decision to get breast implants in the first place
as one of the worst decisions that I've ever made in my life.
And I'm also very positive that I'm going to look back
on the decision to explant as one of the best decisions that I've ever made in my life.
I absolutely do not regret any of it. I would not go back on it.
If anything, I wish I had learned about breast implant illness sooner and gotten them removed sooner.
I would say, if any women out there are considering having this surgery,
Do it. Find a qualified surgeon who can do an en bloc or total capsulectomy
and who believes in breast implant illness
that it is a very real thing. I'll link a resource down below, so you can find
a surgeon that would be near you or look up surgeons in your area. Before you go, on the end screen, I'm going to
link the previous 2 videos that I made about this surgery: One was why I did it
in the first place, what led up to it, more about breast implant illness, and then the other one was
about getting surgery done in
Mexico, the whole experience, the cost, the process,
recommendations and things like that. If you enjoyed this video, you might
consider subscribing to our channel. This is mine and Jordan's channel -
We usually make videos about our life in Mexico and traveling around Mexico.
But one more thing that I'm going to actually call Jordan in here for. Jordan!
[Bell Ringing]
And gong that bell, so you'll be the first to be notified whenever we
release a new video and we'll see you soon...