Anguish and despair dominated the days of Karen and Margarita. Both were unaware of their diagnosis and have lived in recent years with “the predator” in their bodies. He was silent for years, while he consumed them little by little and disguised himself, making them look “more beautiful”.
Karen Báez Noboa was not looking to have bigger breasts. In 2009, after giving birth, she entered the operating room to undergo a tummy tuck, liposuction and breast lift, with the desire for a better silhouette. However, her doctor recommended breast implants, specifically about 260cc of textured silicone, to keep the shape longer.
Everything was going well in the life of the Dominican, who is a professional chef and works for a park company in Orlando, United States, until the symptoms began to appear progressively. He got to have 21 symptoms.
“All the symptoms started about five or six years ago. But, they were isolated little things. They gave me a lot of pain in the joints, migraines and I developed rheumatoid arthritis”.
Other symptoms that he presented were chronic fatigue, insomnia, sudden weight loss and recurrent throat and urine infections. As well as hair loss and memory loss.
She adds, “I developed uterine fibroids, fibroids in my ovaries, gallstones, enlarged blurred vision, generalized swelling, and generalized muscle aches.”
Metals were injected
In January of this year, Báez received the third dose against the coronavirus, which caused a volcano in his body. He confesses that the symptoms intensified and that every day he thought that he would lose his life.
“Silicone implants contain more than 50 different heavy metals and the covid vaccine, due to its conservation, also has heavy metals…”.
“I was dead in life”affirms Báez with a strong voice.
Account visited a long list of specialists, until she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. This prescription was produced by discarding, as the exact diagnosis was not found.
Later she realized on her own that all her changes were due to the adjuvant-induced autoimmune/autoinflammatory syndrome (ASIA).
This syndrome is a set of conditions that are the result of an immune response (hyperreactivity) to external objects such as implants, explains plastic surgeon Gianna Ramos.
The specialist indicates that it is rare, since affects approximately 2-5% of implant patients and that the adverse effects of adjuvants in humans are sometimes related to autoimmune manifestations.
It also highlights that the body always reacts to any foreign object by forming a capsule of fibrous collagen tissue around it, seeking to isolate it from the body.
permanent damage
Not only did the implants cause the same symptoms for Margarita as for Karen, the ASIA syndrome increased the appearance of Sjögren’s syndrome, a disease in which the body’s immune system attacks its own healthy cells that produce saliva and tears.
Symptoms that told her her health was deteriorating included daily puffiness, a red face, “sausage-like” fingers, and altered eyes. The tiredness, mental “fog” and hair loss lodged in her body and did not go away for years.
“My body was rejecting everything that was coming from me. Today, looking back, I almost lost my first pregnancy. My body rejected that too, by rejecting the implants my body swelled up,” he says.
Why was he operated?
By her fortieth birthday, Margarita was an active and financially stable woman for breast augmentation. However, she affirms that the main push for her to get to the operating room was the people with whom she surrounded herself. She was influenced.
“I was in an environment where the ‘friends’ had made their breasts and I let myself be amazed”.
She lasted eight years with her implants, both she and her husband loved them, she says with a laugh. Although her body began to change years later. She visited a general practitioner and several rheumatologists, who diagnosed first suffering from stress, lupus, rosacea or liver cirrhosis.
The beauty outweighed the pain
Margarita got used to the pain. She thought it was natural to live with pain, and she already saw it as “normal”. In addition, he did not think about removing the implants, because he had very nice breasts, but the problems increased. Her left prosthesis became encapsulated and the pain was so intense that she had to have several massages.
“I thought I had breast cancerBecause I used to go to the doctor a lot, I always had a problem with my breasts, a pain or something like that. There were cysts, nodules, and little balls of fat.”
Between the percentage of those affected
It took time for them to discover what was happening to their bodies. In Margarita’s case, at the end of a year’s medical journey, she found a rheumatologist who told her that removing her implants would help her by 60% or 70%, and that was enough to make the decision.
She discussed it with her husband and scheduled a consultation with the same person who performed the surgery, who showed complete willingness and professionalism to perform the removal. Within days she was back in the operating room. Three years have passed and she confesses that her life changed instantly.
For her part, Karen, who had her explantation less than a month ago, realized from an Instagram video that she was a victim of this evil. She was browsing the social network until she came across an audiovisual by Colombian doctor Alan González, an expert in the removal of prostheses, and began to investigate the subject.
In the profile of the doctor he finds the testimony of the actress Angeline Moncayo, from the telenovela “Without breasts there is no paradise”who later became his coach and gave him advice on the matter.
In his search on the Internet and before talking with the actress, Báez arrives at the documentary “Tetas grandes”, in which Moncayo recounts his entire journey and suffering from the implants. Seeing her with her husband, they agreed that the similarities were too many and, surprised, they finally breathed in peace when they discovered what she had.
“That (the documentary) was an awakening, that’s when I found out what I really had, I started looking, and really when I see all the criteria for ASIA syndrome, I say: this is what I have. There is nothing else to do, we have to remove the implants.”
The day came and after two and a half hours, she left the operating room being the same Karen from eight years ago. She says that despite having undergone a surgical procedure, she felt clear-headed and even the swelling on her face had subsided.
When you remove them, one of her implants was covered in a layer of tissue. “The body is so wonderful. And God made the human body so perfect that trying to protect me from a foreign body, he covered me like a prison.”
Present
Both agree that if they had the opportunity to turn back time they would never have had surgery and are grateful to have discovered what was happening to their bodies. They add that the explantation brought them back to life and that now more than ever they love each other just the way they are.