{"id":19413,"date":"2021-04-22T09:48:18","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T16:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"https://www.realself.com\/news\/?p=19413"},"modified":"2023-10-12T16:28:45","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T23:28:45","slug":"breast-explant-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https://www.realself.com\/news\/breast-explant-surgery","title":{"rendered":"Why I Removed the Breast Implants I Loved and Got Fat Transfer Instead"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liz Lugo<\/em><\/a>, 31, is a Miami-based senior executive director and cohost of the <\/em>Becoming Badass podcast. She recently made the decision to remove the breast implants she loved and get a fat transfer instead. This is her story, told to Beth Shapouri, edited for length and clarity. <\/em><\/p>

I got breast implants<\/a> in 2008, after moving from Fort Myers to Miami, where so many women had them and everyone looked so gorgeous. I gave in to that peer pressure and got a breast augmentation<\/a> that took me from a B cup to a DD. I loved<\/em> my breasts after. I felt like they were part of me, and I couldn’t imagine ever not wanting implants. <\/p>

Interested in breast implant removal?<\/small><\/div>Find Doctors Near You<\/a><\/div>

I first heard about explant surgery<\/a> six years ago, when a friend of mine, Jessica, was researching it, to deal with some health problems she attributed to breast implant illness<\/a>. I remember thinking, That sounds crazy. <\/em>I kind of brushed it off and didn’t take it seriously. <\/em>Even as a few more women I knew went for explant surgery over the years, I just kept rolling my eyes. I didn’t believe BII was real. I thought, All these people are just falling into this fad. <\/em><\/p>

Things began to shift for me after December 2018, when I went for what I thought was a routine 10-year implant replacement, to swap my old saline inserts for silicone ones. About a month after, I started feeling pain on my left side. It got worse fast—by mid-February 2019, my left breast was hard and looked like a tennis ball that was squared off on top, due to capsular contraction<\/a>. It was so bad, you could see it in pictures<\/a>. I knew I had to do something. <\/p>

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I went back to the same plastic surgeon in March 2019, to have the implants swapped out again, and that seemed to help a bit at first. The left side was still bothering me but not as much as the first time around, so I thought maybe it would get better with time. Instead, things got worse. I started getting shooting pains in my arm and eczema breakouts on my hands. In June of that year, I started getting acne, which I had never really had before, and my hands began going numb. By November, I was a mess emotionally—I would cry over every little thing and I started having panic attacks. I used to have a good memory, but now I was forgetting words when I was talking. I could see the image of what I was trying to say, but I couldn’t think of the word itself.<\/p>

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