This is why THEY NEED to know.

You can now get a sense of WHY OUR SOCIETY IS SO IMPORTANT as this dear soul has received my help. Please get your letters in Adella

I underwent bi-lateral mastectomies and immediate reconstruction under the hands of Dr.s Patricia Clugston and Dr. Urve Kusk of Vancouver Canada on Jan 7/2000.

I had immediate problems..numerous infections...fluid build up that would just not stop, and general physical and emotional pain and fatigue, constant pain...in retrospect it could not have been easy for my body to accept both the loss of it's own and then accept a foreign body.

Newly exposed nerves trying to heal next to shell made of worse things then just silicone, for the eventual expansion of skin.

My personal story is truly one of horror...it involves Doctors too blinded by the money to see human worth. I finally underwent emergency surgery under the hands of Dr. Douglas Courtamange at the Vancouver General Hospital in August of 2000, at which time in a second operation where he debrided and found an abscess deep in the chest wall that contains braided suture material and numerous titanium clips) I am grateful the surgery was not performed by Dr. Clugston as she proved to me that she would not have told me the truth about what they eventually found in there.

She was almost overcome with anger when she found out I'd been told. I have never been allowed to see her again.

I was told rather then seeing her for my 10 day check up that I could go to the local hospital or my family doctor, she had no further need to see me. I had nearly died. I still had an implant in on the other side and it too had trouble, but she didn't need to see me? Now I wonder why I didn't start screaming for help right then, but when you are very sick..you can see the trees for the forest I guess.

But this story it involves also a government who permitted this to happen...knowingly permitted this to happen...and the greater horror of this still is that I am but one of many..past and present...and if allowed future woman who risk loss of life if permitted to undergo such radical surgery.

I wish that I could recall where I read this or what caring soul told me this but if the rate of failure was as high as it is in breast implants for any other medical device that device would not be allowed on the market. Hey don't take my word for this there are after all proven statistics...they are lower by far then they should be but they do exist.

The fact that this situation exists at all is obviously financially driven and could not continue were it not for a government more concerned with financial outcome and keeping the masses happy, then it's peoples health and welfare.

Personally, I am now finally without implants. I underwent 12 operations. I am in constant neuropathic and muscle pain and require monthly infusions of Lidocaine and other narcotic pain killers. My status of full time self employed musician went to being totally unemployed and unemployable, for over 5 years, and even now my career is far from what it was and sadly ever will be,. And yes even now the pain interferes with my ability to perform.

I know people who have implants and they love them....so far...so I'm not saying that everyone's body puts up the fight that mine did, but....many many do and those that have not...in years to come? They will. When is it going to be too many? So many that it must stop?

And for what? We're not talking about a heart pace maker..something that keeps you alive! oh yes that's what I'd read that if there were the same "failure" risk ratio with the pace maker as there is with breast implants. that the pace maker would have not been allowed to remain on the market..! Pace makers keep people alive and yet with that failure rate they'd be pulled yet implants continue and what we're talking about risking our lives for is a physical feature that is deemed so important we risk our lives to have them replaced from cancer surgery or have them bigger or perkier or whatever the reason. There is no reason good enough..the risks are too high. I dare say what profit is shown is quickly eaten away in caring for those who have become ill from them.

I personally cost our government hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Just in my care alone.

So the plastic surgeon makes the money putting them in. And the government pays for the maintenance of health and the removal? Um I can't see where that's the best use for our tax dollars. I mean thank God that someone is at least helping us after this mess occurs. I know how I was treated at times by hospital staff unaware that my implants were because of cancer related mastectomies, I can't imagine being a young woman having chosen them simply for cosmetic reasons, I can't imagine how she must be treated. So there is an awareness in the medical community. Implants can mean big trouble.

BIG TROUBLE, no pun intended

Well. My life seems at this point kind of ruined. But I'm trying to think more positively and do have good days when I think hey I can over come this but then the pain takes over again and I just don't seem to have the energy to retain that positive and much needed ability to want to survive this.

You know what's also hard to deal with is that I chose this option of mastectomies as the fastest safest even easiest way to deal with my breast cancer and prevent further cancer. So for all these years..I've been sick and in pain and not because of breast cancer but because of breast implants.

Somehow that adds insult to injury. It hangs over me, I feel it's my own fault.

That's pretty sad.

Oh yes you may be interested to know that I was in the recent mem's study of silicone implants.

I was never contacted or examined in regards to their success or failure. I underwent emergency surgery in September of 2003 to have them removed. My general health improved almost immediately unfortunately there is no cure for neuropathic damage only control.