My Breast Implants Almost Killed Me

That's when I "came out" with my story on the TODAY show, two weeks after my explant operation. After airing my story, my Instagram inbox was flooded with other sufferers who had joined the dots about their symptoms and undetected ruptures or "gel bleeds." They'd send me pictures of their green implants and messages like, "I knew it! I was right. Thank you, you saved my life. If I didn't see you on the television, I would never have persisted." Editor's note: Andi Lew writes here from personal experience and as an advocate. This is not medical advice. If you have breast implants and are experiencing symptoms, speak with a qualified physician. I chased beauty and found a health crisis I felt immediately better and relieved after my explant, as most do, but I was waiting almost two years to save up for the operation. I was initially quoted around $25,000. During this time, silicone was leaking into my lymph nodes. Now I live with the consequences of my actions, but too many are waiting because they can't afford it, can't get a surgery date, or are still coming to terms with what this is. In those two years, I doctor-hopped, trying to find the right surgeon who would believe me or meet my financial situation. Six surgeons and an MRI did not pick up a hole in my left breast implant, which was exactly where I was pinpointing it to be. Instead, they detected a fold on that implant in the MRI. It was the first time I realized that doctors were focused on the aesthetic result rather than health as a priority. If there is no visible capsular contraction at stage three, like what you may have seen on shows like Botched , they don't view you as an emergency. If there is no detected rupture, then you will not be triaged. It was a case of, "you look great, you have time." You are never really the same after breast implant illness. The truth is that there are not enough surgeons who can do a specialty procedure called "en bloc" or "complete capsulectomy," where the surrounding scar tissue needs to come out with the implant bag intact inside. This is important because it contains any leakage of silicone, and women have also reported mold growth inside ruptured saline implants. Removing the implant bag with the surrounding tissue can contain the spillage. It's an oncological procedure that is quite new, and the surrounding scar tissue, called the "capsule," needs to be sent off to third-party labs for cancers like ALCL (anaplastic large cell lymphoma) and squamous cell carcinoma . You must also be tested for infections and mycotoxins. The truth is, you are never really the same after breast implant illness, and it's not just the health ramifications, which mimic the symptoms of autoimmune disease because the mast cells (immune cells) start attacking themselves when there is a foreign body within the body. Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) is common among breast implant illness sufferers, but it actually needs a new name. It's not just the breast that's being affected, but the entire system. It's an inflammatory driver. The professor who performed my operation, Anand Deva of Macquarie University, found that the hole was exactly where I had been pointing to. His team established the world's first dedicated breast implant clinic and has been running a multi-year study into implant complications. Their six-month follow-up data found that 80% of patients with breast implant illness symptoms reported feeling significantly better after removal. Deva's position, which I wish more surgeons shared, is that inflammation is the driver, and that the question worth investigating is whether that inflammation triggers a systemic immune response. Although you don't need a rupture to have breast implant inflammation. Why are these stories not enough to enact serious change with how the profession practices? Why is there an FDA black box warning on the devices in America, but there still is no Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) black box warning in Australia? Why are insurance companies not paying for the explant surgery in so many cases? Should the original implanting surgeon be at fault, or the product manufacturer? Or are we at fault for our vanity and insecurities? And if so, do we deserve to potentially die as a result? Women are getting seriously ill from their implants. The FDA has logged more than a thousand cases of implant-associated lymphoma, including dozens of deaths, and countless more women describe systemic symptoms that no registry captures at all. They're hiding in online subculture Facebook groups, desperate to learn and support each other. It's daunting and desperate. 80% of patients with breast implant illness symptoms reported feeling significantly better after removal. In Australia, explant surgery can be classed as a "life-threatening illness operation." I learned this when I was desperate to find the funds for my surgery and sat on a waitlist of almost 12 months because of the demand for explants. I had to return to Australia for my surgery even though I live in Los Angeles, because it was cheaper to do it there, albeit dangerous to fly. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) will allow Australians to access their retirement fund, called "superannuation," on compassionate grounds for a life-threatening illness operation. When I read those words, I burst into tears because I realized that's what this is. The surgeon and diagnosing doctor confirm it in their letters. It moved me to write a book about the women who are removing their implants, Treasured Chest: Exposing Explants and Empowering You . I toured this book on television shows across Australia and America, and have written numerous articles in the media to help women come home to their divine organic bodies. In July 2026, a little after my 53rd birthday, a woman on Instagram reached out to me asking for help. She wasn't able to afford the surgery to remove her implants and was using a syringe to hand drain a green, pond-like fluid that was coming out of her breasts daily. Her breasts looked completely deflated after this excruciating act. Clearly her implants had ruptured inside her, and she was no longer able to breastfeed her baby. I created a post on Instagram and encouraged her to make a GoFundMe page. I shared it like crazy and reached out to doctors, absolutely furious, as I reminded them that when they became medical doctors, they took the Hippocratic Oath, to "do no harm." If these implants are this deadly and literally a "ticking time bomb," and women don't have the funds to remove them, where are these health professionals when the device goes wrong? This isn't a new problem. Allergan issued a worldwide recall of its BIOCELL textured breast implants and tissue expanders in 2019, after the FDA linked them to breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma. And still, a new and supposedly safer product always follows. The stories have been swept under the rug for decades, yet there is always a new solution or device that is supposed to be safer. The truth is that any foreign substance within the body is going to want to come out. We heal through expulsion of toxins or foreign bodies, via an orifice. We can sneeze, cough, vomit, or sometimes the toxins come out of the pores of our skin or the natural detoxification pathways. The difference is, a breast implant has nowhere to go, and when the body can no longer adapt to the toxic foreign body, this is when we end up with a laundry list of symptoms, like rashes, rapid hair loss, dry eyes, loss of libido, depression, anxiety, inability to sweat, inflammation in joints, and countless more. I spoke to the friend I'd encouraged to start a GoFundMe. She told me she had called a crisis line. That was when I understood what staying in contact with her had actually meant, and it was when I understood she isn't unusual. There are thousands of women in the same position, and hardly any of them are being believed. We get called crazy, or menopausal, or told it's anything but what it is. That's why I've been trying so hard to raise money for a documentary. This affects somebody's mother, somebody's sister, somebody's wife, and most people have no idea it's happening. The stories have been swept under the rug for decades. Lately I've been thinking about Erin Brockovich, the legal clerk who built the case against PG&E over contaminated groundwater and won. Julia Roberts played her in a film that made the whole country pay attention to something it had been ignoring. I keep wondering whether this is that kind of story, with the same kind of litigation gathering behind it. Brockovich never stopped. I'm starting to understand how that happens to a person. This isn't work I went looking for, but I can't put it down while women are still getting sick. Too many of them are ashamed, exhausted, and watching their bodies break down from inflammation caused by a device that was sold to us as safe. I want that to change. More than that, I want women to remember that their beauty was never the thing sitting on their chest. So should this industry be allowed to continue as it is? I ask that knowing I made the same choice every other woman did, and knowing I had to forgive myself for it. Why would a wellness expert put something like that in her body? Maybe this is why. I spent about a year addressing the reason why I did this to myself in the first place and removing the deep shame. It's not always for aesthetic reasons. Mine came from trauma that made me want to put something on my heart to create a barrier between myself and an intimate partner. There's a reason I used the word "chest" in my book title, and not language like tits, boobs, jugs, and not even breasts. What's behind the chest is the heart. Readers of my books started writing to me with versions of the same story, telling me about assaults and encounters they hadn't let themselves remember until something brought it back. Being an activist isn't something I set out to do. But I recognize the crusader energy, and I know where it comes from in women. We are used to pain. We bleed every month, we give birth, we switch it off and get on with the day. That tolerance turns into intuition, and intuition turns into tenacity when someone else needs looking after. For decades we were called overemotional and hysterical. Now women with breast implant illness have a name for what happens in the exam room: medical gaslighting. The professor who performed my surgery wrote the foreword to my book. He explained that he still can't quite believe I knew my own body well enough to insist there was a rupture. Medicine isn't a perfect science, and it can go wrong. But he told me I had taught him something about his patients, and that doctors have to learn to listen. I agree. Especially when the patient is a woman describing a body she knows from the inside. So what comes next? Trials are already underway for a new product, a mesh that surrounds fat transferred from elsewhere in your own body, marketed as safer than silicone or saline because the material is yours. Last week I got an email asking whether I'd like to take part. Now women with breast implant illness have a name for what happens in the exam room: medical gaslighting. I'm still getting used to the body I was given. I've been learning to see my scars the way kintsugi treats broken porcelain, mending the cracks with gold so that the damage becomes the most beautiful part of the object rather than the part you hide. And still, for a moment, I felt a flicker of excitement about having bigger breasts again. That's how deep the sell goes. Told once more that I wasn't finished, wasn't enough, and I was confused all over again. Why do we need to be sold another product? Breast augmentation is no longer the number one cosmetic surgery in America. Explants are rising. We are already whole. Want more from Andi? Treasured Chest can be found on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or get your signed copy at andilew.com .