My Experience With Breast Implants

The following is my story. After reading it, please consider sharing your perspective on plastic surgery and related procedures. My goal is to shame no one. I only seek to gain a broader understanding of other people's experiences.

Starting at around 5, I became fascinated with breasts, going so far as to slip a Playboy into a Life magazine while my mother shopped at Albertson's. I was convinced that's how all women looked, so imagine my shock when adolescence passed without my breasts completely filling an A cup.

I was devastated and ashamed. Going swimming was a nightmare, but dating was worse as I feared the moment a boy would try to touch my breasts and feel the padded bra instead. Imagine losing your virginity to a guy who looks down as you lay beneath him and exclaims jokingly, "Where are they?"

Ballet was a natural fit, girls with big breasts often had them reduced. Modeling in the late 70's and early 80's was most often not an issue. But it never failed to hurt when a stylist would comment on my lack of a bust, or I'd have to stand next to a more endowed model while a casting director decided who to hire. Over the years it convinced me that I wasn't quite a woman without B cup breasts.

When I made the shift to acting, I knew I had to have bigger breasts in order to succeed. Ashamed to admit that I was ashamed at being flat chested, I went from an A to a B, hoping no one would notice. It took a few years of auditioning but I eventually broke through and starred in several tele-films and mini-series.

Ironically, the very thing that I thought would launch my career put an end to it, as many roles for films like Top Gun and 9 1/2 weeks required nudity.  The horror of telling the director he'd have to light around the scars under my nipples was more than I could bear. Eventually I quit, choosing to step behind the camera, but even that had to be abandoned when my body rejected the implants - 81/2 years after their implantation. The symptoms were numbness in my fingertips, severe headaches,  pains in my chest from the scar tissue crushing down upon itself, cuts that wouldn't heal, and an extra 8 pounds I could never lose. Worse the scar tissue began pulling my breasts in different directions. Very reluctantly, and with tremendous shame I finally admitted to my friends what I had done.

That was in 1992, just when silicone breast implants were causing so many problems. It was frightening to learn I might find myself disfigured at 32 - single and perhaps unable to breast feed. My wonderful yoga teacher, Ana Forrest, shared a Mother Jones magazine article that named my doctor, the implant I'd received, the study he participated in and the year of the study - 1983. Finally I understood why the doctor called 1 year after the operation to see how I was doing. He wasn't being nice, he was following up on the study results.

Imagine how deceived I felt, learning he'd lied when he said the foam covered implants were safe and tested, and that I would have them for the rest of my life without any chance of capsular contraction. In fact, the foam covering, into which the scar tissue would grow, had never been tested in humans and was normally used in upholstery. Some women reported the foam had dissolved and there were concerns it could be carcinogenic.

The plastic surgeons I met with tried to convince me that I'd be horribly disfigured or commit suicide if I didn't replace them. Frustrated, I turned to a reconstructive plastic surgeon who felt we should remove them and decide how to proceed later. I'd have a second set of scars under my breasts; the only possibility if I hoped for a chance to breast feed later. The surgery would be long as the scar tissue would have to be cut out with the implant inside - as opposed to smooth surfaced implants that would just slide out, and I'd have to set aside a pint of my own blood in case there was heavy bleeding during the procedure.

Finally realizing how I'd helped convince other women to follow my example by being in the public eye with implants, I contacted Allure Magazine, who agreed to follow my journey in getting them out. I spoke on a local Los Angeles TV station before and after, and even debated a plastic surgeon who tried to argue that getting implants or getting them replaced was no big deal.

Well, I let him know that the 2 weeks after the implantation were the most painful of my life, that the explantation took three hours, and that I couldn't fully use my arms for several months afterward  while the raw slabs of flesh grew back together. At the time, I didn't know that I would suffer from auto immune syndrome for 2 years, that I'd have dry eyes even to this day, or how long and painful the healing process would be.

Ten years after the explantation, I finally worked up the courage to get a mammogram and discovered a lump. The technician ventured a guess that it was silicone. And so another operation and another scar later, I was finally free.

Not surprisingly, I'm not rushing out to get botox or restylane injections. I've learned the hard way that there's just too much money to be made from a woman's lack of self esteem for plastic surgeons to be completely honest. And worse, they can't always fix the mess they make.

* Although silicone implants were finally approved by the FDA in 2006, that does not mean they are completely safe. There still has not been sufficient testing to determine their safety and the FDA does not require the same level of testing for medical devices that do not save or sustain a life as they do for prescription drugs. They assume that doctors will fully inform their patients of the risks involved, but what recent surveys have found is that most women don't realize what they are getting into by electing to have their breasts augmented.