My BII Story
I became a mother very young. My first son at 20, my second at 22. I was in awe of my body and what it could do, that it could create these amazing human beings. Then I finished breastfeeding my second child, and one day I looked in the mirror. What I saw brought up a lot of trauma I did not even realize I was still carrying.
Middle school. High school. A time when kids can be very cruel. I was a very late bloomer. Because I was not developing like the other girls, I became a target for humiliation, just because of my lack of breast. I had not thought about any of it in years, and standing there in front of that mirror, all of it came rushing back. So I decided to get breast implants. I went on my way and I thought I had fixed the problem.
​
What I had actually done was create something so much bigger. And it would take years to uncover what that was.
Your labs look fine.
Within six months of getting implants, I went to my primary care doctor and said, I am so tired. I think maybe I have thyroid issues. I was 24. Your labs look fine, they told me. It is just because you have two kids under four.
​
That did not track for me. When I had a two year old and a newborn, I was not this tired, and I never got any sleep. But I was 24 and a doctor had just told me nothing was wrong, so I went home and got on with my life. That sentence followed me, in one form or another, for the next 17 years.
​
Seventeen years, several sets of implants, ruptures I did not know about, and new symptoms after every exchange. Fatigue that never lifted. Restless legs. Gut issues. Hormones that would not regulate. I mentioned all of it to doctors. I was never once told my implants could be part of it, and I never once considered it myself.
Finally I reached a point where my labs were not fine.
I had a liver in early stage failure. I do not drink alcohol. I had full body tremors, heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, gut issues. I was in bed 16 or more hours a day. I was scheduled for a liver biopsy, and my enzymes were doubling and tripling every four weeks while nobody could tell me why. I could no longer participate in my own life.
​
I hit rock bottom
​
I had been in bed all day and I was home by myself.
​
I got up and I walked to a chair in the corner of my room, and I broke down and began crying in a way I have never cried before. And then from the depths of my soul I cried out:
What is wrong with me?
I do not know how to describe the way I asked it, except to say that it was primal. The next moment, I heard a voice in my right ear. An audible voice. It said two words.
Breast Implants.
I had never, ever considered my breast implants. And here is the part of my story that matters more than the voice did. It is not just that I never considered them.
In 17 years of appointments, specialists, functional providers and clinicians, every one of whom had my surgical history in front of them, not one person ever suggested that a device implanted in my chest could be causing a systemic reaction in my body.
I took a moment. Then I grabbed my laptop and I typed in: can breast implants make you sick. I found thousands of stories just like mine.
​
It was solidified in that moment. Everything made sense.
Explant, and what changed.
As soon as I realized I needed my implants removed, I started researching surgeons, and I learned there is a very specific way this has to be done. I had a total intact capsulectomy, performed by a surgeon who specializes in explant.
​
I woke up from surgery and felt a difference immediately.
​
Within eight weeks, the liver enzymes that had been doubling and tripling every four weeks had returned to normal ranges. The biopsy was called off. The only thing I had done was remove my implants.
​
My restless legs were gone. My skin started to improve. My hair started to grow back. Little things, and then more things, as time went on.
​
I want to be honest about the rest of it, because this is where a lot of women feel blindsided. Removing the implants put the fire out. It did not repair the fire damage. I have spent years since rebuilding from severe mitochondrial damage, the kind that happens when low grade inflammation runs long enough to become chronic. That work is what I do now, for myself and for the women I work with, and it is the part almost nobody prepares you for.
What I understand now and did not understand then.
This is not anti implant content. I am not here to tell any woman what to do with her body. I am here so that she has the whole picture, which is something I did not have.
​
The moment an implant is placed, the immune system begins responding to it. That is not a malfunction. That is a healthy immune system doing exactly what it is designed to do when it meets something it does not recognize as you. The body walls the device off in a capsule, keeps immune cells on watch, and maintains that surveillance for as long as the device is there.
Most people call this breast implant illness. I call it breast implant inflammation, because inflammation is what is actually happening, and inflammation is the root of most illness.
​
It also explains why my symptoms looked nothing like the next woman's. Inflammation presents differently in every body, based on genetics, existing conditions and total toxic burden. One woman gets thyroid symptoms. One gets migraines and depression. I got a failing liver.
​
And when the triggering agent is never removed, the body never comes out of the cell danger response. That is the active defense state. It is meant to be temporary. Held open for years, it becomes the foundation of the mitochondrial damage cascade, which is the real reason so many women still do not feel well after explant.
​
That is not a scare tactic. It is just biology. And it is the biology nobody explained to me for 17 years.
The women nobody listened to.
After my own explant, women started reaching out. Then more of them. Then I went to work in a surgeon's office, where I attended surgeries, consults, pre ops and post ops.
​
That is where I listened.
​
Doctors are not taught to truly listen. Even the best explant surgeon does your surgery and sends you on your way, and all of the questions, all of the things you are experiencing afterward, land somewhere else. For years, they have landed with me. I wrote The Explant Book because those questions kept coming and there was no handbook for any of it.
​
What I noticed is that women come to me looking for answers, and then, without realizing they are doing it, they tell me what they already know.
​
The answer was within
​
That is the whole thing, really.
​
Getting women to understand that they already have the answer within is the heart of everything I am trying to do here. I do not want any woman to spend 17 years being told her labs look fine while her own body is telling her something entirely different.
​
I do not regret my story. I found my purpose inside the most painful part of it, and pain can turn to purpose. That is what Olistico Life is.
​
You are not crazy. Your body is trying to tell you something. And there is a way to support it.
​
If you want the information I cannot share on social, this is it.
Subscribe to my private emails and I will send you what I am reading, what I am using and what I am learning, in plain language, first.
A Note on Health Information
I am not a doctor. I am someone who has been through this. Everything here is my own experience and my own medical records, shared for educational purposes and not as medical advice. Always work with a qualified healthcare professional before making changes to your health routine.