Hey, it's friend Mel and welcome to The Mel Robbins Podcast. So I was at Mass General Hospital last Friday getting a mammogram and my boobs are all smashed up like a pancake. If you've ever gotten a mammogram, you're like, how does my boobs do that? And your ribs are against the cold machine and then it hits me. Oh my gosh, I've never told you this story. The one about how I got breast implants and then everything went horribly wrong. It was like a four year ordeal.
In life, you're going to make decisions you regret. I know I certainly have. And the second I got those implants, I knew I had made a huge mistake. Maybe you've been there too. A one-night stand, a bad financial move, drinking too much and then doing things you wish you could take back. That's the story of my 20s, 30s and 40s or dating someone. Everybody warned you about them. You thought you knew and it's only later when the whole thing blows up that you're like they were exactly right.
The thing about regret is that it weighs on your chest, just like those implants. Wait on mine. And standing there in that hospital, getting a mammogram last week, I knew it was time to finally share this story with you. Because this isn't just about implants. It's about the decisions that change you, the shame that you carry and the courage that it takes to admit, I wish I'd done it differently. And if you've ever made a decision that you wish you could undo, this episode is for you.
Hey, it's Mel. I'm so excited that you're here. It is always such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. If you're brand new, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I also want to take a minute and acknowledge you for taking time to listen to something that can truly help you create a better life. So last week, I was in our Boston Studios all week, taping a bunch of episodes that you're going to fricking love.
And on Friday morning, before work, I went over to Mass General Hospital to have a mammogram. And before I jump into the story, huge shout out to the incredible nurse, Deirdre, who took care of me and the team of doctors who then did the ultrasound that followed the mammogram. And while I was there, I'm standing against that machine, you know, and they're just, breathe, hold in and you're like, oh my gosh, my boob is like now like a fricking pancake.
And I'm standing there not breathing and it hits me. I've never told you this story. The one about how I got breast implants. And then everything went horribly wrong. It became this huge ordeal. I'm still dealing with it. It was a massive hell scare too. I wanted to talk about this for two reasons. First of all, to spread awareness about something called breast implant illness.
And please, if you have anybody in your life with implants or that are thinking about getting them removed or thinking about getting them, please, please, please share this episode with them, I wish I knew everything I'm about to share with you way back when would have changed the course of the last six years of my life. But the bigger topic has nothing to do with implants. It has to do with regret. How do you handle regrets? How do you learn to listen to your intuition?
So you don't do dumb things that you then regret. And the single biggest takeaway, which I'm going to emphasize to you over and over and over again. If you're struggling with something, do not struggle alone. Because I learned the hard way that struggling in silence just makes the thing you regret even more painful and the shame even bigger. So let's get into this. And let's just start with the most obvious question. Why did I get breast implants? That's a great question.
And as I sit here now that I'm 56, I did this when I was 47. This is now almost nine years ago. And I think about where I was in my life at the age of 47. I hated the way my body looked. And I'm a very health conscious person. I want to live a long and vibrant life. I take care of myself. I eat organic foods. I eat local. I exercise just about every single day. We talk about health a lot on this show. I'm not putting a ton of chemicals on my face in terms of the products.
Or the makeup that I use, I buy natural fiber clothing. You're kind of getting the gist of this, right? But I hated the way my boobs looked so much. I didn't even stop to think about how off-brand it is to take that good of care of your body and then go, oh, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to get these chemical balls and I'm going to stick them in my body. And they're going to somehow help me feel healthier. Like I wasn't even thinking straight. I hated the way my body looked so much.
And so at the age of 47, I've had three kids. I've breastfed all of my kids. There's also something called gravity. And I don't know what your body looks like, but I'm going to tell you what my body looked like when I was 47 years old. My, what were once perky, amazing kind of size B, I would say boobs. They started to look like dirty gym socks that were hanging off my chest.
They were visual that I could give you kind of a elastic rubber band stretched out or how about a cow tongue just laying right there. They were so bad that as I would stand there brushing my teeth in the morning and I'd be looking at myself, my, my, my nipples were pointing down and in opposite directions. And look, I'm like a confident person. I'm a very body positive person. And so feeling that self conscious about my body, especially when I was naked, I'm going to confess something to you.
I'm not sure I've ever told you before. At this point in my life, with these like skin sacks hanging off my chest, when Chris would walk into the bathroom, I just, I felt like I wanted to cover myself up. Now he never said anything to me about it. He loves me just as I am. This was up in my head. This was me starting to obsess about something in my body that I just was like, I, this is awful. And here's another thing that it was impacting.
If I'm being truly like Frank with you, it was really impacting my ability to be present during sex. Because what I was present to, especially when I was on top, is that I've got like these bags hanging off me. And so I just got to the point where I'm like, I am so tired of complaining about this that I decided I'm going to do something about it. Now here's the first mistake I made. I did not do my research. I did not do my, I was a complete idiot about this.
And I think when you get obsessed about something that you want to fix, like I got to fix it. Logic goes out the window. And so once I got into my mind, I know what I'm going to do. I'm just going to get some small implants that might lift these gym socks up and, and turn them into like baseballs. That's all I'm looking for. I'm not looking for any massive big implant. I was just looking for perky, like baseball size breasts. That's what I was looking for.
And so I talked to a friend of mine who had recently gotten implants. She looked fantastic. They were bigger than what I was wanting to get. She loved her surgeon. And so I went to this one surgeon, did not even do my homework, did not interview three or four people, did not talk to a lot of people that have implants. And here about their experience, what they regret, what they didn't, I just went with the first person, complete idiot. I'm owning it, okay? I get in there.
And I casually kind of say to this doc, what about a lift? And he kind of looks at my dirty gym socks there. And he's like, oh no, no, no, that's not going to work. You just have a yard of skin and absolutely no mass. I wouldn't be able to lift that up. Like you'd lift that up and basically you'd have no boobs and nipples sewn against your chest. It's not going to work. And so I'm like, okay, didn't get a second opinion, not at all. And then check this out.
You want to hear the irony of this whole thing, you know, miss, I'm healthy. I'm taking care of myself. So let's put some chemically laden, like silicone balls underneath my muscle. I chose this product called the gummy bear implant. And I chose that product because get this, the tear drop shape and the textured kind of cover on them looks more natural, you know, we want the fake things that you're doing to look more natural. I'm like, I'm in tear drop shape.
It's got this sort of texturing on it. That sounds great. Is that what my friend got? Oh no, that's not what she got. She got some melt. No problem. I'm not going to do my research here either. And what I knew is that I liked the fact that they quote looked natural. And I also liked the fact that if heaven forbid something were to happen and it were to rupture or somehow tear, that saline wouldn't be leaking through my body, right?
Because when they named it the quote gummy bear implant, it really was like a gummy bear. If you like, chomp down on a gummy bear and you get that gel, that's what it looked like. So I'm like, okay, I'm in. So I go in for the surgery. I'm all excited. I figure I'm going to wake up and I am a whole new male ravens. I'm going to have these discrete little baseball boobs. Nobody's going to know that I have done this.
I'm going to feel like vibrant and I'm going to be proud and my sex life is going to be amazing. And this is going to be absolutely incredible. When I woke up in my own bed after kind of the medication finally were off, I knew then. I had made a huge mistake. And I'm not quite sure why I knew then that I had made a huge mistake because I couldn't see what it looked like yet.
I remember distinctly waking up and I'm kind of coming out of the anesthesia and Chris is sitting on the bed next to me and I said, how does it look? And he goes, I haven't seen it yet. And he goes, but it looks big. And I said, it feels big. I literally felt like I had basketballs on my chest. And maybe it's because it felt so swollen and there was so much bandage. It's almost like my chin was resting on the top of this mass that was on my chest.
And my husband said to me, he said, well, the surgeon said that your boobs are two totally different sizes that he had to try like 21 different combinations of implants to get the right look. And they kept lifting me up to see what it looked like. And then lowering me down so it turned out I had one that was one size on one side, one that was another size on the other side to try to sort the whole situation out. And I'm going to tell you something.
I was very clear with this surgeon that I want boobs that are a 36 B. That's it. I'm talking baseball boobs. We're talking perky high school boobs here. By the time the swelling went down and I got the wrapping off and my implants finally settled in. What size do you think I was?
38 W. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And I remember having these arguments with the surgeon where I would go, no, no, seriously, I just went like 36 B. I just went like baseball size and he kept going, you know, I always have a lot of women come in here after the surgery and say they wish they had gone bigger. And I said, I promise you, I will never walk in here after this surgery and say, I wish we had gone bigger. I just want small perky little things.
I just don't want my boobs flapping against my stomach as I'm trying to have an intimate moment with my husband. I just don't want these skin sacks that look like half filled water balloons to be hanging around my ribcage. I don't want to have to scoop it into my bra and like kind of tuck the folds of skin in there. Are you with me? I know I can feel some of you nodding along. And so when I looked in the mirror and they were like so huge. It's not what I asked for.
It's not what I wanted, clearly the surgeon had taken liberties in terms of deciding what he thought was the right balance for my frame and body. And it was horrible. I felt like my boobs came into the room before I entered the room. I immediately hated how they looked. I was super self conscious because remember I didn't want anyone to know. I wanted this to be like a subtle, all natural thing. And I think it's kind of hard to say you wanted to look all natural.
If you're going to put plastic objects in your own body, but it is what it is. It's nine years ago. I knew this was absolutely a mistake. And this brings me to the first thing that I want to talk to you about. That when you regret a decision that you made, there is so much shame. And for me personally, I just was like, you're a freaking idiot, Mel.
Because not only have you spent all this money doing this, but if you get them out after you've just elected to get them in, do you know how horrific your chest is going to, you thought that you were actually self conscious before this? Just imagine if you take these things out and now you've got Frankenstein looking gym stocks with all kinds of scars and stuff all over it and they're stretched out. So I just felt like I was the dumbest person. I hated how they looked. I felt heavier.
I started dressing in bigger clothes. I started covering up my chest. I hated exercising. I don't know how the heck Pamela Anderson ever ran in that bathing suit with the boobs that she had because I could not jog whenever I tried to do yoga. You know, if any kind of twist, I'm like, what is that like a yoga block in my body? I can't get my elbow around that damn thing.
And then over time, it went from mental complications and this feeling of regret to literally physical symptoms that I did not realize at the time were 100% caused by the implants. For example, I started experiencing all this numbness in my right arm and tingling on my pinky fingers and my elbow and under my armpit, my renoid syndrome, which is a condition where your fingers and toes can turn white. It got horrible.
Like when I would go to the grocery store, if I were to pull something out of a freezer, like frozen franchise or a thing of ice cream, my hands would turn bright whites like circulation gone. I had a really hard time focusing. I mean, I'm talking more than usual. And I felt something was off, but I started always a premenopause. Is it something else? Is it just that I'm stressed out at work? And yet looking back, I know that my body was trying to tell me, get these fricking things out of you.
You know, and this is something that I didn't even realize. Like when you stick a foreign object in your body, your body immediately, see, you're pleased it as a threat. And so in the case of an implant, what happens is your body creates what's called a capsule of scar tissue around the implant to try to protect your body from this foreign object. And so what was happening in my body is the capsule was getting so thick, it was pressing against my nerve endings.
And the implant themselves checked this out. It started to fricking move. Like my cleavage was not this like kind of normal cleavage, but it started like an inch higher on the right side than it was on the left side. And here's the thing. I've done a lot of things in my life that I regret. And whether it's a one night stand or drinking too much and behaving in a way that you are completely mortified by or big financial decisions that I'm like, oh my god, why did I do that?
And I've done a good job of basically either ignoring what I've done or just trying to forget about it. But when the thing that you regret is actually in your body day in and day out, it's very hard to ignore it. And so I felt kind of ashamed that I was so insecure about my body that I'd paid all this money. And now I had this train wreck on my chest. It's not like I was kidnapped and then drugged and then somebody stuck these in my body. I mean, I did this to myself.
And then because I spent all my money on the surgery, I didn't have the money to try to get them removed. And then I also felt like if I get them removed, it's going to make the situation worse. And it's almost like if you ever had this feeling that if you address it, then you're admitting that you made a big mistake. But if you kind of like just take a big breath and soldier forward, that it's not as big of a mistake as you know it actually is. And that's how I felt.
And if you're in a situation where you now regret a decision that you did to yourself, like maybe you took the wrong job and you left a great job and now you regret it. Or you got in a really unhealthy relationship that everyone was telling you. Just stay away from that person. And now you're in it and you've tried to fix it because you know getting out of it means you have to admit that everyone else was right and you were right in your intuition as well, but you just ignored it.
Or maybe you've buried yourself in credit card debt like Chris and I did. And you are so embarrassed about it that you don't even look for help on how you get out of credit card debt or a one night stand where you're like, oh my God, I think I have to go get screened for venereal disease. What the hell was I doing? Or you break up with somebody and then you realize they were the person and now they've moved on.
I mean, you can't, there's so many ways that you can find yourself in a situation like I did where you see the decisions that you made. You see that you spent six months chasing somebody who clearly wasn't interested in you. They were just stringing you along and you just kept on going along for the ride, ignoring your intuition. And I'm here to tell you that it is normal to make decisions that you're going to regret.
And here's the huge mistake that you make or at least I make this one is that you think you have to navigate this alone. It's that shame and that sense that I did this to myself. I ignored my own intuition. I ignored common sense. I was a complete idiot. And then you isolate and I'm here to tell you do not if you're struggling, face it alone, staying silent about it makes it worse.
The only way to get through a hard situation is to lean on other people, your family, your friends, medical professionals. It is not true that you're alone. You may feel alone. That's a thousand percent how I felt. I felt alone in this struggle and I was almost embarrassed to talk about it because I did it to myself. But here's what I want to highlight for both you and me.
And this is what I would tell myself if I could time travel back nine years ago to just after getting this in, which is you're not stuck with this male. Everybody makes mistakes. There is always a way your job is not to pound yourself into the ground for making a mistake. Your job is to find a way to make it better. And there were a million things I could have done. I could have gone to my doctor. I could have gone to a different doctor. I could have talked to other friends that had implants.
I could have talked to my family. But I was so stuck in the regret and the embarrassment over the decision. You and I did nothing. I bought bigger shirts and button ups and I just pretended. Yeah, these look great. I'm really happy I got these. And that was a huge mistake. Do not face the thing you regret alone because we all have done things that we regret. And it is way worse when you sit with it and it gets immediately better when you start to talk to someone else about it.
So I live like this for three years. Like I can feel in my body right now what it's like to live day in and day out beating yourself up over a mistake that you made. And you might be thinking yourself, well, what actually changed, Mel? And the moment that changed my life is such a pivotal moment that I can put myself at the scene of what happened at exactly the right time.
So it's three years later, I have been living with these things and I've been starting to think in the back of my mind, I have to do something about this. My keynote speaking career is taking off, which means I'm seeing more and more photos of myself on stage and I'm seeing myself covered up and I'm seeing how I look and I'm going that doesn't look like me.
Have you ever had those periods of your life where you think you look a certain way and then you see a photo of yourself and you're like, oh, God, like that's what I look like for real. Oh, okay. Now, look, and I'm all for body positivity, but let's have some body honesty right now. There are times in your life where you do not like how you look and that's where I was.
And so it's now gone from this pit in my stomach of making a mistake to this intuition and trying to knock on the door and go, Mel, open this up and let's fix this. And when we come back, we're going to jump right back into the story because I'm sure you're also going, well, Mel, what was it that made you finally want to do something about it? I will put you right at the scene of what happened when we return.
And I want you to share this episode with someone in your life who may be struggling or beating themselves up over a mistake because it would be a marvelous way for you to support them and remind them that they're not alone. And there's things that they can do. And while you hit that share button, we're going to hear a short word from our sponsors. Stay with me. Welcome back. It's your friend, Mel Robbins.
And today I am sharing this deeply personal story, something I've never told on the podcast about getting breast implants immediately, immediately hating them. And then living with the shame of this decision that I made and feeling so stuck and so alone and one of the big takeaways from this experience in my life that I'm going to keep saying to you is that you are never alone. And do not, for crying out loud, do not try to face something that you're struggling with alone. Don't do it.
Just always somebody that you can talk to. And so that brings me to the part of the story where I've now been living with these things for three years. I'm filled with shame. I hate them. I freaking hate the implants more than I hated the skin socks that were hanging off me. So what changed? It's a great question. And this was such a pivotal life moment for me that I remember exactly where I was. I remember exactly what I was wearing and exactly what happened.
So I'm getting off a plane, I've flown into Las Vegas because I'm giving a speech there the next day at this huge conference. And it was a jet blue flight, I get off and I'm walking down the hallway to go down the escalator to the baggage claim and a woman that I know who was also a keynote speaker was coming into the terminal to catch a flight.
And she yelled to me and I love her so much, she's been a huge inspiration of mine, particularly in the keynote speaking business and we hug and we quickly catch up. And then I'm like, where are you going? She said, I'm going to Cleveland to go see this doctor. And then she drops this bomb on me. She says, you know, I've been talking about my brain fog and how I've been losing hair and you know my mom died of cancer.
So that made me start to look into my breast implants and Mel, I've learned that my breast implants are making me sick. My breast implants are the reason my hair is falling out. It's the reason why my hands are numb. It's the reason why I have all this brain fog. And now that my mom is gone, there is no way that I am going to take a chance and leave these things in my body. And so she said she had tracked down the leading surgeon on breast implant illness and ex-plant surgery.
I'd never even heard the word ex-plant. I'm like, there's a name for the surgery for getting these things out of you. That's cool. And so she said, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to send you a link to this doctor so you can learn more about her practice and why she's doing this. And then she said this. She said, Mel, I'm going to send you a link to a Facebook group. It's invitation only. It's not a public group. You have to request to join it and then they let you in.
And at the time, there were hundreds of thousands of people in this group that was all about breast implant illness. And she said, I'm going to warn you. When you get into that group, you are going to be shocked at the stories, at the research about breast implant illness. And as she was telling me this, I started to kind of feel that pit near stomach. That you feel right is like the trailer is happening before a horror movie. You know, like, oh, God, what's going to jump out at me.
So I get to the hotel. I crack open my laptop. I request to join the group and I get letting. I spent the next five hours mainlining everything in that Facebook group. I had no idea that breast implants can make you sick. And the amount of research that's been done in this is shocking. I can't believe more people aren't talking about this. That breast implants can cause autoimmune issues, circulatory problems, issues related to focus, can make your hair fall out.
It can cause all kinds of things. I was completely naive and unaware of all of this. Now I'm going to confess something to you as I was sitting there reading all of this. I kept thinking you're a total freaking moron, Mel. Like you didn't even look into this before you got your breast implants. Sure, when I picked out the gummy bear implants, I got handed a little pamphlet that probably had a warning wing with John it that was printed in size like 0.00 font.
And the truth is when you get yourself all excited about something, you don't look at the warnings anyway. You think you're the exception. So did I. That's why when your friends warn you, I don't like that person. I think I'd stay away from that person. You go on the date anyway because you think you're the exception. And so I'm sitting here looking at all of this and I'm jaw on floor. And now of course I'm feeling like I have an alien in my body and I need to get this out of my body like now.
And I want to share with you a 2021 study of breast implant illness that was published by the National Library of Medicine. There were 182 respondents in this study, 97% of the respondents to the study report that implants have negatively affected their health. 95% identify with the symptoms of breast implant illness. 96% of respondents had implants placed in for cosmetic reasons.
And the most common symptoms that are associated with breast implant illness are brain fog, fatigue, joint pain and hair loss. 60% of respondents learned about breast implant illness from a friend or a family member or social media platforms, not from their doctors. No warning about the adverse side effects of putting a plastic implant in your body. And you want to get this?
40% of the respondents in the survey had had their implants removed and after they were removed, 97% of people reported relief of all of the symptoms. And that was my experience too, but I'm jumping ahead of the story. So I had almost all the symptoms. And the symptoms that I had, fatigue, joint pain, brain fog, I also had dry eyes. I would break out in these rashes like around my chest. I had trouble concentrating memory loss. I had thinning hair. I felt depressed.
I mean, all of it, not dimension anxiety. And I'm going to tell you what I did next, but there's a really important point here. For three years, my intuition and my body had been going, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh. Nope, nope. For three years, I had known that it was a mistake. I had known that they didn't feel right.
You just know when something doesn't feel right and you're like trying to force it, whether it's a relationship or a financial purchase or, you know, doing something like I did to my body that I then regretted. And there was something about seeing this Facebook group that allowed me to finally hear the truth of my intuition. What it had been saying to me all along.
And I'm telling you right now, if there is something that you regret or a decision that you're struggling with, your intuition is knocking on the door. You got to open it. You got to open it. Like you don't have to manage things. What if you made them better?
Because you're a really smart person and so am I. But if you get upstairs in your head and you start overthinking, spiraling and all this stuff, you're never going to see that you can always make a situation better through the way that you think or what you do next. All this information was out there. I could have tuned into my intuition earlier and I could have started to look into breast implants and removal and I would have learned all this a lot sooner.
And I'm telling you this because I guarantee you, if you're struggling with something or you regret something or you made a huge mistake, the issue isn't your ability to make things better. The issue is how much time you're spending with regret, which is keeping you trapped in this mistake because you actually hate the decision that you made and 99% of decisions in life can be reversed. Let's say that again, 99% of decisions in life can be reversed.
And everything that you do that you regret, you can apologize for it to yourself or another person. You can learn from it. You can do better if you learn from it. Something's only a problem if you keep repeating the pattern. But if you make a mistake and you learn from it, that's called wisdom. And here's the coolest thing that I discovered the second that I started talking about it. I'd talk about it to anybody.
Like now that I'm in fix it mode, I don't have shame anymore because now I'm in solution mode. When you stay alone in your head about the one night stand, now you're getting screened for venereal disease or you're, you know, you spend too much money on something and you can't buy groceries for a month and you feel really stupid about your shopping addiction. When you keep that stuff silent, you are going to stay stuck.
The second you start researching and talking and going, this is something I'm not going to live with. I'm going to figure out how to make it better. It is amazing how the world just sends the right people into your orbit because what then happened is after that speech in Vegas, I then flew to San Diego, we're at another speech and my dear friend, Jody, who has been my friend since elementary school. And all it takes is a friend from elementary school.
They just drop the truth bombs on you, right? So we're sharing a hotel room in San Diego. That's our thing. We get a room with two queen beds and then it's like a girls get away and we anchor it around the speeches that I'm giving. We have so much fun. We're standing in the bathroom in the hotel yet again, I'm brushing my teeth with my underwear on, standing next to my elementary school best friend.
And Jody looks at me in the mirror and she points at my chest in the mirror and goes, that doesn't look right. I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, Mel, that implant on the right, it looks like a half a chicken breast that is just hanging off of you and it's an inch taller than the other one. And I'm like, oh my gosh, by the way, there's a word for this. It's called contracture.
Basically the scar tissue that encapsulated the implant had grown so hard, it was not only pushing against my nerves, it was literally pulling the implant up in my body. And that's why I felt all the numbness and pressure. And so as Jody's like, it shouldn't look like that. That does not look right. That's not good work. I've seen good work and that's not good work, Mel and I'm like, great, okay.
I mean, just leave it to an elementary school friend to just drop a bomb like that on you and thank God she did because it was just more and more evidence aligning with what my intuition had been telling me ever since I had woken up from that surgery, which is these things need to get out of your body. And here's the thing that I'm going to warn you. I hadn't even gotten the bad news yet. I'm going to tell you what happened after we take a short break to hear a word from our amazing sponsors.
But this story is about to get worse before I get to better. Stay with us. Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here with me. Thank you for sharing this episode with people in your life that would really benefit from this conversation, whether it's about implants or it's about regret and learning from mistakes and forgiving yourself and moving on. We're at the point in the story where that's it. I am now going to do something about this.
I'm talking about it. I'm sick of living with the mistake and the regret. I am telling people I'm researching. So I reached out to Dr. Lujin Feng who has an entire clinic in Cleveland. She has dedicated her career to ex-plant surgeries. She is one of the world's leading experts on the topic of breast implant illness. In fact, she has conducted multiple studies and she is leading the charge on doing research to try to get ex-plant surgery covered by insurance because it's not.
And so I called them up, I explained that I had bumped into the friend, they put me on a year-long wait list for ex-plant surgery and I was told that I need to pull my medical records. This is where the story takes a scary turn. So I call my original surgeon who I wanted to kill for doing such a horrendous job in the first place. And it took a few days for them to get the medical records because they didn't have the medical records at the doctor.
They had them at the hospital where I got the surgery. And I get the records back. I send them to Dr. Feng's clinic in Cleveland. And almost immediately I get a phone call from them. And they tell me, Mel, holy cow, your breast implants were recalled over a year ago because they have established a link between that particular breast implant that you had in your body to a rare form of lymphoma that is caused by those breast implants.
So I'm now finding out from the ex-plant surgeon, not the person that put them in me, but from the person who's going to take them out that my implants were recalled over a year ago. They're not even sold anymore. Why? Because I know you're going to ask, I had the allergen biocell textured implants. 84% of people with this type of rare cancer have the exact same implants. There's now a class action lawsuit. I was so angry because they had been off the market for over a fricking year.
And I never got a single notification from the doctor who put them in me. After Feng's team then expedited the surgery, so I now have a surgery date and I have the perfect surgeon. There is no doubt in my mind that she is going to do an incredible job. I cannot wait to get these things out of my body. I have about a month before the surgery is going to happen.
And what I'm now dealing with, which you're going to deal with when you really face something that you regret and try to make a situation better, is this spiraling of the negative thoughts. I still had all these negative thoughts that were haunting me. Like first of all, I had spent so much money on the first surgery and now I was about spend twice as much money to get them removed because it's not covered by insurance. And here's the thing that really kills me.
You want to know something crazy about the fricking breast implant industry when the breast implants got pulled from the market. Do you think allergen was covering people's surgeries? No, you want to know what they were willing to cover a new set of implants with a pair that was not recalled. I mean, give me a fricking break. So I'm angry about that. And I know that this is something that so many people in a similar situation also deal with.
I mean, I couldn't stop thinking, what if this looks horrible afterwards? And I remember after the surgery, I have a really good friend that had a double mast deck to me and had just had implants put in and she was saying to herself, you know, here I've gone through cancer and I already feel so beaten up and the implants that they put in are safe and they make me feel better. And besides, if I then take them out after cancer, like it's going to look terrible.
And so I'm saying this because if this is what you're thinking, it is completely common. And all I can say, and it's what I said to myself is you have to trust your intuition. Nobody can give you the right decision for your body. Only you know what is right for your body. Only you know what the right medical call is for your health. And you have to in these situations tune out all the fear and tune out all the recommendations and just take in everything and then tune into yourself.
And I just kept telling myself, I know this is the right decision. I know it's going to be okay. I trust this surgeon and I also know, and I'm going to remind you of this too, that no matter what happens, you're not going to go through it alone. Especially now that you're telling people about it, you're not going to go through it alone. No matter what happens, you're not going to go through it alone. So fast forward, I get to Cleveland, I have the surgery. It was a massive procedure.
And by massive, I mean, it was like a six hour long procedure because when they open you up, it's not just pop those puppies out. That's not what they're doing. When they open you up, she not only has to take out the implant, but the real danger particularly given that I had the implants that were recalled. Because she had to pick out every tiny piece of scar tissue that had encapsulated itself around that implant.
She also discovered when she got in there that that fricking surgeon had cut my pectoral muscle like right in half. So I had to have like another 147 stitches in order to stitch that sucker back up. And if you're wondering when she took them out, she then did an extensive lift with the skin that was still there. Which also then proved to me that that first surgeon was fricking lying. Of course you can do a lift, but an implant is much easier and it does the work for you.
And you probably make a little bit more money because you got a product in there. And I know I'm sounding cynical, but the whole thing made me so angry. But the surgery was a huge success, a huge shout out to Dr. Fang and her entire clinic. She is a complete artist. I now have baseball size, all natural boobs. They look perky like they were in high school. I could not be more thrilled to have this foreign object out of my body and to have my health restored. Now, a couple things.
My personal experience. The second those things were out of me, I felt 100 times better. Within a week, the tingling disappeared. Within several months, I could not believe that I had lived so long with my lung capacity constrained with the numbness, with the fog in my head. It was unbelievably liberating. Which is another important point because nothing feels better than trusting your own intuition. Nothing feels better than when you find the courage to admit to yourself.
I made a mistake and I'm going to do what I need to do to make things better. And the thing is though, I'm not out of the dark. I still have to manage the fear that I have about these implants and this connection to this rare form of cancer. In fact, every six months, I get a mammogram and an ultrasound just to make sure that nothing new has developed.
And I'm proud to tell you that after several years, it's been three years of these six months appointments, this last one that I did with the team at Mass General, I got the all clear to be able to go back to an annual breast cancer screening. Holy cow. And that brings me to something that I want to drive home with you. You will do things that you regret. So will I. I'm sure I got a long road ahead of things that I'm going to regret. It's part of life.
But you always have within you the power to face anything, to learn from your mistakes, to lean into the things that you regret and make sure that you change the way that you behave or you change your habits so that you don't keep doing it. Because if you do it once, it's a mistake. If you do it again and again, it's pattern. Those are two totally different things. And one of the takeaways for me from this whole experience is, do your homework, Mel.
It sounds dumb that I'm giving myself that advice, but I just got so locked on to fixing what was a problem with my body that I didn't give the decision, the space and the consideration that it needed. And the other thing that I learned from this experience is I was quiet for far too long. I hid. I hid underneath baggy clothes. I hid beneath a smile. I hid the embarrassment by not talking about it. And the reason why I was quiet and the reason why I hid it is because of the shame and the regret.
And if that's what you're doing right now, you have to tell someone. I hope this story is going to inspire you to pick up the phone and tell someone about the thing that you're struggling with or tell someone about the thing that you did that you regret. And the other thing that I learned from this experience, there's a Facebook group for everything.
I guarantee you, whatever mistake or struggle or regret or shame that you feel, there is a group of people online in a controlled setting who are sharing their stories. And simply jumping into that environment, even if you do it under a fake name, it will make you realize you aren't alone. You're not the only person that's made this mistake. You know what you are? You're human.
And I want to remind you of something else that's easy to forget when you're in the spiral of self-sabotage and you're struggling with something that you regret. There's a lot of things you've done in your life just like me that you regret. And you learned from them. I am very controlled about my drinking so that I do not say something that I regret. How did I learn that? By making a lot of mistakes and learning from them.
And so I want to remind you that there's a lot of things that you've done in life that you would do differently, but the only reason why you know you would do them differently is because you learned from it. This experience, this thing that you regret is teaching you something. And perhaps what it's teaching you is that your intuition has been right all along. You just need to slow down and find the courage to listen to it. It is never too late to clean up a mess.
It is never too late to learn from a mistake. And any regret that you have, it will haunt you unless you are willing to talk about it. And here's what I truly want you to remember. We all make decisions that we regret. But it's not the regret that defines you. It's what you do after. It's the choice and the decision that you make to face it, to learn from it, and then move on from it. If the shame, the guilt, the what ifs, they don't have to hold you hostage anymore.
In fact, I'm inviting you to allow it to lift you up, to become stronger, wiser, and more compassionate. Ask yourself this question. What if this isn't the end of my story, but the beginning of a new chapter? Because remember, regret is just a form of self-punishment. And here's another thing to understand about what a colossal, horrendous waste of time it is. The biggest mistake that I made once the implants were in was staying quiet.
And you do that because of the shame and the regret that you feel. And if you're still swirling in regret or you're struggling to move on from a mistake that you made, here's what I know. It has its hold on you. And it is a gigantic waste of time and energy. There's not a single story that you can tell me of a human being that regretted something and somehow regretting brought back the moment from the past and allowed you to fix it. Regret is punishing yourself for the past.
The opportunity is for you to no longer be quiet, but to open your mouth, to talk about the mistake that you made, to ask for help, because the second that you do that, you start looking to the future. You realize that you do have more power. Your mistakes or the regret that you feel can only define you if you allow it to. See, there's power in what you do once you realize you've made a mistake.
There's power in you making a decision to face it, to speak about it, to learn from it, to make it better. You can push past this. You can learn from it. You can come stronger, wiser, more compassionate. You could even have perky high school boobs if you want. So ask yourself this. What if this mistake isn't the end of the story? But the beginning of a whole new chapter. The second that those implants were removed, I felt this enormous sense of freedom. I could breathe better. I felt lighter.
I felt the burden of everything that I'd been beating myself up over was lifted and I'm telling you something. That's my invitation. I want you to picture this mistake that you made and the regret that you feel almost like an implant. It's something that is inside you, that you carry around. And at any moment, you can decide to extract it. You can speak about it. You can learn from it. And that is exactly how you move on.
As I'm really reflecting on this and where you might be in your life, it's easy to forget that you're human. And I don't know about you, but I tend to learn more from my mistakes than from the things that I do right. And this was a big mistake and it taught me a lot. And one of the things that it taught me is that regret is something you choose to carry with you. It's almost like a psychological implant. You make a mistake. And when you make a mistake in life, you always have two choices.
You can learn from it or you can beat the hell out of yourself over it. And for far too long, I made myself miserable. I made myself feel terrible about the mistakes that I've made. There's a better way to live. You can free yourself from this burden. And the first thing you need to do is to stop being so afraid of this mistake that you made. Stop bashing yourself over it.
And the only way that you're going to stop that bashing is by speaking up, by asking for help, by leaning in and doing the research, by finding a group of people that have dealt with the same issue. And those actions make you feel less alone. And you want to know what else those actions do. They empower you to see that there are things you can do. There's always something that you can do. There's a different way to look at something. There are options to make something better.
But the most important thing is learning from the mistake. If you allow yourself to do that, you will free yourself from the regret that you feel. And you will be able to stop looking at the past and start creating a better future. And you deserve that. You do. So whatever it is, here's what I want you to remember. We all make decisions that we regret. And you and I are going to make some decisions in the future that we are definitely going to regret.
You and I are going to make a bunch of mistakes that we spend a little time beating ourselves up over because, you know, if you make a mistake and you feel bad, that's a mentally healthy response for a day or two. But you got to be able to learn and move on from it. Because it's not the regret that you feel that defines you unless you allow it to. Your power is in what you do after the mistake that you made. You get to decide how you're going to face it.
You get to decide that you're going to learn from it. You get to decide that you have the power to make any situation better, to make your life better because it's true. You do. And so if nothing else, I hope that this story that I've told you and the lessons that I've learned from it have inspired you to give yourself a break, to free yourself from all of this shame and realize that you do have power over the situation. There are things that you can do or learn to make it a little bit better.
You can make a plan. And finally, as you've been listening to me tell you this story, you are probably thinking about someone in your own life who needs this reminder. Maybe they're not listening to their intuition or they're ignoring symptoms or they're stuck in this cycle of constantly feeling ashamed of the mistakes that they've made in the past or beating themselves up over something that they did. One of the hardest things in life is realizing you can't make someone else get better.
You can't free someone else from the regret that they may feel. But I didn't say you couldn't help them learn how to. At some point, the person who made the mistake has to choose to forgive themselves. It's almost like an ex-plant surgery that you do for your soul and your mind. You remove this toxic thing inside you that makes you obsess over the mistake and the regret and just fills you with shame.
That's honestly the first step is deciding that you're sick and tired of suffering over this and it's time to make a decision to do something about it. And so share this episode with anyone in your life who could benefit from this story and the reminder that everybody makes mistakes. The real power is in learning from them. And thank you for spending time together with me and listening to my story.
Thank you for sharing this with people in your life who may have implants or thinking about getting implants. And thank you for taking this topic seriously. I know you're going to share this far and wide, which is going to help me with this mission of getting the information out there. And thank you for taking everything to heart about the mistakes and regrets that we all have and how to move beyond them.
In case no one else tells you this, I want to be sure to tell you because I'd regret it if I didn't. Then I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And I know absolutely everything that you and I talked about today is going to help you do it. Alrighty, I'll see you in the next episode. Because I let the fear and the shame creep in, I felt shame because I felt like, yeah, okay, gotcha. Wait, hold on. Okay, I'll do one more time.
And I think we did an excellent job in wiping it out. Don't you think? Terminal, terminal. I can't even speak right now. Terminal. Just kidding. Have fun, bud. He's like, I don't think I need to hear this taping. Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyer's right and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend.
I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode. Join the judges.