Woman battles seven-year illness after breast implants
‘I blame my implants for 99 per cent of my sickness. I hated them because I knew that they were making me sick. I knew they were poisoning me.’
Karin Aguirre
Karin Aguirre has had two sets of breast implants fail, three implant reconstruction surgeries, and suffered through seven years of mystery pain and chronic fatigue.
Now, a fortnight on from having her breast implants removed, the 39-year-old Aucklander ‘‘feels like a different person’’.
‘‘I woke up [after surgery] and felt amazing. It was a mental release, but also the implants felt so foreign in my body so when I woke up I felt the coldness, tightness and awkwardness was gone, and it had been replaced with warmth and softness.
‘‘I feel like the fog has gone and I’ve walked into a meadow of sunshine.’’
In 2010, after the birth of her third child, Aguirre made the decision to have a bilateral mastectomy with implant reconstruction and salpingooophorectomy surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes.
Aguirre’s mother battled breast cancer twice and also ovarian cancer. She carried the mutated BRCA1 gene (the ‘‘Angie gene’’ made famous by Angelina Jolie), which is known to increase the risk of developing breast cancer. Tests revealed Aguirre also carried the mutated gene, putting her at a 87 per cent chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime and a 60 per cent chance for ovarian cancer.
A year after the implant reconstruction surgery she developed grade four capsular contracture, a condition in which internal scar tissue forms a constricting capsule around the breast implants. ‘‘Effectively my body was rejecting them,’’ she says.
Capsular contracture is not uncommon and Aguirre had been made aware of this risk prior to surgery.
Under a ‘‘substantial amount of discomfort’’, she opted to have them removed and replaced with a different brand of implants.
‘‘At the time, I thought it was a really good trade. I would get them in and move on, no problem,’’ but that wasn’t the case.
Soon after the second implant surgery in 2011, flu-like symptoms crept over her. ‘‘I didn’t pick up on it at first because it was gradual and I learnt to live with it, but looking back now I realise I was sick for quite some time.’’
Chronic fatigue, hair loss, insomnia, eye problems, night sweats and joint pain plagued her life with increasing severity.
With no explanation for her illness, she soldiered on and tried to keep life as normal as possible for her children.
‘‘I didn’t want my kids to see me sick and I maintained my job throughout this whole journey. Work was my distraction from how sick I felt.’’
There were days when her pain was high and tolerance low, but she managed to carry on by telling herself there was someone in a worse position than her.
But in 2014, her right implant ruptured: ‘‘It was painful, like a constant burning pain.’’ She returned to hospital for her third breast implant surgery and the ruptured implant was replaced.
Meanwhile, her mystery illness persisted to the point where she was hospitalised in 2015 and diagnosed with the autoimmune disease sarcoidosis.
‘‘Around this time I started doing my own research and discovered breast implant illness (BII). My symptoms were consistent with those of BII, including sarcoidosis, which is one of the listed autoimmune diseases that is linked to BII.’’
Thousands of women around the world believe they suffer from BII. It is characterised by a raft of symptoms including chronic fatigue, headaches, memory loss, ear ringing, joint and muscle pain, hair loss and skin rashes – but it is not recognised by the medical community.
‘‘I blame my implants for 99 per cent of my sickness,’’ says Aguirre. ‘‘I hated them because I knew that they were making me sick. I knew they were poisoning me.’’
Aguirre’s surgeon was reluctant to perform explant surgery, saying there was no evidence to suggest the implants were to blame, but her rheumatologist was supportive and helped push for it.
Going into the explant surgery late last month, she felt at peace.
‘‘I had no nerves at all. I was so calm it was actually quite eerie. I was just so excited for them to be gone.
‘‘I was told that the implants were safe, good and no problem, but they weren’t. If I had known eight years ago that this would be where I was today, I wouldn’t have gotten them. I would have liked to be given a choice.’’