Julie Christie says nearly 70 mysterious symptoms left her without work, bedridden and disabled. She was spending $10,000 dollars per year on specialists and tests, with no answers.
“I thought I was dying,” Christie says. “ I could not walk straight. I could not eat properly, the water was coming out of my mouth ... I was losing all my hair ... I had rashes, red rashes, white rashes.”
Then, finally, her research led to a breakthrough: Breast Implant Illness, or BII.
At just 17, Christie says a cosmetic surgeon convinced her to get a single breast implant to balance out her chest.
It wasn’t until she had it removed 30 years later that her health finally improved.
Now, Christie is raising awareness about the risks.
Thousands of women suffering similar symptoms find community on Breast Implant Illness social media groups.
But some doctors don’t accept it as a real diagnosis.
“She said she doesn’t know nothing about this,” says Christie about her surgeon. “And because I made a research, I have a mental health problem.”
Dr. Stephen Nicolaidis has removed more than 1,100 implants since 2018.
He says only a handful of patients didn’t feel better afterwards.
“That’s actually why I have a little motto that I came up with … ‘It’s not in your head. It’s in your breasts.‘”
Textured implants like the one Christie has have been linked to complications.
And while there’s no consensus on why people get sick, the surgeon says it’s likely a reaction to having a foreign object in your body for a long time.
Decades of new research and the work of advocates like Christie should change how surgeons approach conversations with patients, Nicolaidis says.
“They have to tell these patients that there is a very high chance you’re going to need at least one more surgery, if not several, in your lifetime,” he says.
Christie adds advocates aren’t telling people not to get implants, just that it’s important to recognize the risks, in hopes fewer people will go through what she did.
