health update
Please bare with me as I jump around and try to piece everything together for you! Many people have been asking for updates on my healing journey and I finally have some time to get it into writing.
Let’s start back in February. My explant date was February 12, 2018. I had what I thought was a difficult recovery. It took me a full 6 weeks to be able to lift my arms and move pain free. A week post op, I accidentally overdosed on pain medication. We realized after, that the dosage on the medication wasn’t adjusted to account for my weight loss. It was pretty scary but after a few days in the hospital, my heart recovered from the overdose. I spent most of the 6 weeks in bed and on the couch with the boys, reading books and watching movies. I was even on IV hydration therapy for 3 weeks at home to try to get my kidneys functioning better. We attempted a feeding tube to try to accelerate the weight gain but that didn’t go well.
My symptoms all subsided quite quickly after surgery. Which was incredibly validating!
The following symptoms were resolved at 3 weeks post-op:
headaches
cognitive dysfunction
recurring infections
unexplained sepsis
nausea
vomiting
heart palpitations
elevated pulse and blood pressure
grey/black urine
low potassium
numbness in my arms
high lactic acid
extreme anxiety
positive autoimmune disease markers
reflux
thyroid dysfunction symptoms
pain around right implant
loose teeth
difficulty breathing
pain under shoulder blade
At 3 months post op:
chronic fatigue
muscle and joint pain
muscle spasms (improving)
insomnia (improving)
dehydration (improving)
Unchanged:
extreme weight loss
leaky gut
IBS
vision loss
parasites
diarrhea
At two weeks post op, I had 250cc of fluid drained from the right breast. This is quite common for women who explant but it’s also super painful. Drains are so important and removing them prematurely is no bueno!
When they remove the implant, the open pocket remains until the tissues heal. The body’s natural instinct is to fill the space - which is why it fills up with fluid. If I had known just how difficult and painful explant is, I might have reconsidered implants on that fact alone. No joke. It hurts THAT much.
My right side had considerably more work done to remove that implant because of the capsular contracture. Even after draining the 250cc another 50-75cc filled back up. I was lucky enough to not require it to be drained again and it resolved on it’s own.
My struggle now remains my gut health and intestinal parasites. This has been an ongoing issue since I was treated with antibiotics for the spontaneous swelling around the implant in September 2017. The constant diarrhea, food intolerances, abdominal pain and bloating, extreme weight loss and dehydration are all still severe and ongoing. I’ve had a colonoscopy, gastroscopy, CT scans, blood tests, stool samples... the tests have been endless. The only test that has given me any insight is the test that I paid for through a lab in the US. These results clearly show that I have several serious parasitic infections but no Canadian doctor that I have met with will even consider them.
So after 8 months of struggling with this, I decided to take my “friends” somewhere where they are more familiar with parasites... today I went to Mexico in search of parasite treatment.
