It's time for us to meet our next guest. Welcome Kelly.
So, Kelly, you had this kind of surgery, as well?
Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?
Well, when I was 17 years old,
I had to go to see a doctor.
I was a bit different to other young girls
because I didn't have a left breast grow.
There was no breast tissue there at all.
I left it for a little while,
thought maybe I just need to grow a bit more.
Started getting right breast tissue, but still nothing on the left.
So, my mum saw that I was getting down,
wasn't interacting with other girls with girl talk,
wearing baggy clothes, really down and depressed,
not wanting to really do much.
So we started seeking doctors' advice.
Went to see a surgeon. He agreed to do breast augmentation.
But because there was no breast tissue there at all,
he had to fit an expander so my skin would stretch without having stretch marks.
And with that procedure, it's a little bag gets put
inside your breast with a little port underneath your arm
and saline solution is slowly put into that bag to expand to the skin.
Had that done every six weeks for about two years.
Once they'd got to the size
that they thought was appropriate for my body,
I sat down with the surgeon and he decided,
"OK, we're going to remove the expander
"and replace the expander with a silicon implant."
It was suggested that one was put in the right side,
as well, to make them look symmetrical.
The procedure went fine. I was over the moon with the results.
I felt like I was a normal girl.
About four or five years down the line,
I started noticing changes.
My bras weren't fitting me properly. They felt hard.
It got to the point of where I was in excruciating pain.
We just actually have a picture of your breasts here.
So, the right one is the capsular contracture.
That was like a rock.
When I lay down, it would hit my chin. Wow.
And the left one is what they call a Snoopy's nose,
which the implant is there but my breast tissue
that would have been there has drooped.
It's just like skin hanging from my implant.
And so what did you do to correct it? I ended up going to one surgeon.
I took my bra off and he just looked at me and went,
"I'm going to do the surgery."
So he removed the implants, replaced them and this is where I am today.
I'm still not happy because they don't look how I want them to look.
We do have a picture of your breasts now. But I'm out of pain.
So, they're still very different. It's just one of them things.
I would like to be able to save and have an uplift.
Yeah. But it costs a lot of money.
Rachel, how common is something like this?
So, capsular contracture does affect some women with breast implants.
That capsule closes down.
So, you imagine you've got a balloon in a box that's shrinking
and it's going to outpouch and cause irregularities.
It's not always as far down the line as we've heard.
There are various stages.
So, there is palpable capsule
followed by changing the shape of the breast.
And pain is really the very last stage of that process.
Well, thank you, Rachel.
Kelly, thank you so much for telling your story.