I was the single parent, mother of two beautiful daughters, a full time student and a victim's advocate.  It was challenging but I had the energy, health and skills to manage with a certain amount of personal fulfillment.  I balanced the different areas of my life with skill even though that balancing act was, at times, tentative.

As a victim's advocate I rode with law enforcement on their domestic runs, lobbied the State Legislature, transported victims to shelters and wrote programs.  I worked with victims and the men who battered them, I made videos, lectured and produced two major benefits.

I felt like I had it all.  I owned my own home, had a beautiful family, a very high I.Q., a career I enjoyed, an education, a sports car, never been ill and was reasonably attractive. I had all the material things I would have expect in my mid 20's and more.  I had life by the tail and, as is frequently human nature, I wanted more.

I was one of the many women in America who bought into the male ideal and media depiction of females.  I was one of the many women who acted on that belief.  At a time when there was no negative press on the subject I had silicone breast implants.  My life was immediately and forever changed.

Within days of implantation my hair was falling out, my right arm was grossly swollen, my knees hurt and I had an infection.  Only later did I find out that I walked around for a week with an implant literally exposed. Within days I was taken back into surgery to have one implant removed.  Only one implant was removed because I had no health insurance and the other was not infected. Appearing normal was not a medical necessity.

After the removal of one implant, which left me with one size C and one size AA breast, my health continued to decline.  I hurt all over and I had no energy. I was being diagnosed with arthritis and functioning was difficult.  The media had done nothing yet on silicone and ALL doctors denied any connection.  Believing, as most Americans still do, that doctors were superior people of integrity - I believed them. Because I was now deformed with two different breasts and I could get one put in for a lot cheaper than having one removed, I waited for 6 months and then had the infected implant replaced.

During that surgery I woke up. While my wrists were strapped down I pulled up and off of the table, cut my head on a lamp and found myself in the recovery room.  My body shook violently and the pain was unbearable as the nurse informed me that she was given strict orders to give me nothing for the pain.  As they wrapped me in hot blankets another nurse slipped me something that reduced the pain.  The anesthesiologist came in and I told her I would have her license.  She said, "No one will do anything."  She obviously knew something I didn't yet know. 

Having another implant put in only solved the aesthetic problem. At the age of 30 I could no longer get up and down stairs because of the pain and swelling in my knees. I remember thinking that it felt like someone had a voodoo doll.  I had shooters, achers, pullers and throbbers all over my body.  It was frightening and confusing. 
Lobbying was the first thing to go.  I then had to drop out of school and began raising my children from the bed. Family time was spent with two little girls romping and wrestling over the aching body of a mother who felt and acted 50 years her senior.  The pain was so bad that I began drinking to numb the pain.  I had to quit my paying job and any volunteer work, like the advocacy, was out.  My home was in foreclosure, my rheumatoid factor and ANA were positive and my children were not being cared for.  Then the media reported it - They had made a connection between silicone and autoimmune diseases and there had been evidence of this long before I made the decision to "augment" my body through the "A BETTER YOU " Program.

Furious, I filed suit against the doctor that told me they were "perfectly safe," that there was "only a 2% chance of infection" and that I could "take a hit during power volley ball and they would never break."  I filed suit against the doctor that said he would put them in his wife and that there were no known side effects.  "How could they lie?" I wondered.  This was a violation of the oath he took and I had always thought that was serious. He sold out my life and the mother of my daughters for what was probably no more than a month worth of country club dues. To me he was an aberration - a medical whore.  I just knew he couldn't get away with this and he would be held accountable. After all this wasn't a batterer or sex offender. His peers would not overlook this. I hadn't yet realized that was exactly the point.  I was no longer dealing with a batterer or a sex offender.  Like most medical malpractice victims I was totally unaware of the power I had just challenged.  I was totally unaware of the HELL that was to come.

Suddenly I couldn't get a doctor.  They were rude, degrading, insulting and abusive.  They seemed to take pleasure in humiliating me.  A local rhumatologist lined six of his office workers against the wall while he examined me.  He introduced them as "his witnesses."  Another time I had been working on biofeedback to control pain.  One night I had a temperature of over 104 degrees and had to go to the emergency room.  I proudly bragged to the nurse about how I had raised the temperature of hands during a session. She said, "So that's how you got your body temperature this high." Shocked, I turned my back to her and said, "Get away from me." Because I had no health insurance I felt I had no choice but to go through this degradation. 

I was afraid and wanted this 4 pounds of toxic substance away from my heart and lungs. They no longer diagnosed me with arthritis or autoimmune disease.  With the media report came the diagnosis of psychogenic, psychosomatic and malingering.  I thought I was the only one suffering this abuse.  I thought it had something to do with me. I didn't know that hundreds of thousands of silicone women were getting the same reaction from those we had trusted.

Another doctor once left the examining room and told the nurse I had threatened suicide, to hold me and call for a psych evaluation.  He was lying but I just waited - totally irritated.  I was starting to grasp the concept of unquestionable authority and how people abused that. When the psyche representative arrived it was a dear friend and colleague.  He looked at me and said, "I told you, medicine & justice don't mix. You can't have both at once?" I nodded in disgust and he escorted me to my car.  I knew I had just escaped something horrible and would later hear these stories from the victims who weren't lucky enough to have friends doing emergency psych assessments.

With all of the other symptoms my left breast was rock hard and purple.  I was scared to death.  I had sold my car to keep the house.  My children cried for orange juice. I had no health insurance, which really didn't matter because according to the experts there was no problem and I just suffered from an overactive imagination.  It didn't help to remind them that my blood work was positive before the media reports.

I was using alcohol to kill the pain in my joints and connective tissue.  I was abusing alcohol to increase my energy and to numb my fear of the present and future.  I never asked for drugs and didn't want them. After a few embarrassing and dangerous situations with alcohol I realized that that form of pain relief was costing me too much.  I spent the night in jail for a DUI. In the probation office I ran into a judge that I liked, respected and had even dined with.  As much as I tried to hide the fact that my life was literally falling apart, I couldn't.

The purple breast was now a combination of shades of purple, black and yellow.  It hurt a lot and never moved.  Without insurance and with doctors denying there was a problem it couldn't be dealt with.  One night a hospital worker, who identified herself as a plastic surgeon, did deal with it.

Later, as I gave my attorney more medical history he told me that the procedure should have never been done.  As he investigated further he found that three students had signed a surgeons name and performed a surgical procedure on me while I was awake.  They took turns squeezing the implant in an effort to break down the tissue around it.  I had handprints from my neck to my waist and by the time the bruising disappeared the breast was again rock hard and even more discolored.

The students denied they did it and called me a liar.  They denied ever seeing me.  They said there were no medical records. The attorney finally found a single document they couldn't deny.  During deposition they admitted that they were called out of a party, they don't remember if alcohol was served, they signed the doctors name and did the procedure.  I will never forget that pain associated with my breast or seeing their faces distort as they squeezed it.  They never apologized for calling me a liar.

I got sicker and more vocal about what the Indianapolis medical community had done to me.  Our finances got worse and so did my health. I married a dear friend. 

Life was looking up.  For reasons I couldn't explain I had found a doctor in the Yellow Pages who agreed to help me.  To us, this was a miracle. No physician in town would see me because of the suit I had filed. There was also a surgeon in Cleveland that was helping women like me and they thought my insurance might pay and my daughters occasionally had orange juice.

My health was worse.  My joints and connective tissue were inflamed.  I had horrible rashes all over my body. I had two violent seizures. My hair was thin and my hips hurt so badly that I frequently couldn't walk.  I had ridiculously high heart rates that the doctor said was panic. 

The microvascular surgeon in Cleveland said that she believed having the silicone removed could help me.  She said that because the silicone had only been in me for a few years I had a chance to recover.  She said that the autoimmune disease or my bloodwork wouldn't turn around immediately but she truly believed I could be helped.  She said that I would be deformed, my chest would be concave, because I would loose my breast tissue.  I agreed to undergo explant surgery and to become even more deformed to have my health back.

Because of my paralyzing fear of doctors she demanded I be released to a hotel adjoining the hospital on the conditions that my husband and a friend take care of me and that I keep coming in.  I had tubes running all through my chest and my husband drained the bags that hung from me.  I don't remember anything about that week except the bandage removal and her discontent over a drug that my Yellow Pages internist had given me - Dilaudid.

The surgeon removed the tubes and bandages.  She went on about how good my breasts looked and got a mirror.  She encouraged, even begged me to look.  I wouldn't.  When I got home I gave the internist the Dilaudid back. It took weeks before I looked in the mirror.  When I did it was apparent that she not only did a good job but also cleaned up the scars left by Indiana doctors. 

My health had gotten worse. At about 32 years old I spent a lot of time with a walker and in a wheelchair.  My heart rate would go as high as 312 and I was on numerous drugs.  My trusted Yellow Pages physician now had me on 60 mg. of Restoril, 3 mg. of Xanax, 12 Percocete, up to 30mg. of Prednisone, Verapamil 240 SR, .5 mg. of Digitalis, Ultram, Wellbutrin, Paxil, Vicodin, Axid, to name a few. I took these drugs in a single day, every day. My medical records reflect that when I met him I was on no drugs and that I was very concerned about what he was giving me.

I was not getting better and my Yellow Pages doctor literally said he had no hope for any recovery as he added more drugs.  He told me that he wanted me to see one of his friends.  He wanted this man to put a port (a hole) in my spine to inject the drugs into.  I told him that it would never happen, that I had been mutilated enough.  My doctor then went into his routine spew about how I had cancer cells on my cervix and needed a hysterectomy.

Earlier my doctor had wanted to do a pelvic exam. I had refused but agreed to see one of his friends.  These two had determined that I need a hysterectomy and even referred me to a gynecological oncologist.  While they pressured me to have a hysterectomy his other friend, the port doctor, kept sending me stuff in the mail.  He seemed absolutely determined to put a hole in my spine. I regularly pitched his literature and questionnaires into the trash.

I decided to see a female gynecologist that these men didn't know.  Her response was that I didn't need a hysterectomy, that I didn't have cancer and that she didn't know what was going on.  I was too drugged to be suspicious.  I was falling down, oversedated.

After another serious fall my husband took me to the emergency room. I had been on all these drugs for years.  He then took me over to the neurologist's office.  The neurologist looked at me and told my husband I was oversedated and that he wanted me to go into the hospital to get off the drugs.  We then went over to the internist who said he wanted me to go into the hospital to get off the drugs, for testing and that the neurologist would do laser acupuncture and provide a tens unit for the undiagnosed hip and joint pain. The next day I was admitted into the hospital.

Much of my memory from this event is gone.  The reconstruction of these events comes from my medical records, my family and what little memory I do have. 

The day I was admitted into the hospital an I.V was put in my arm. I didn't realize that I would be getting off drugs with an I.V.  My image of detoxing had always been people sitting around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. I remember asking about the drugs the nurse was giving me and she treated me like an idiot and refused to tell me.

It wasn't apparent to me that I was getting worse but my family was insisting the drugs be reduced. The nurses laughed when I said I was supposed to get a Tens unit and laser acupuncture.  According to their medical records on day 2 I pulled the I.V out, it was replaced and the drugs were increased.  On day 2 my oxygen began to drop and I had gastroparesis due to the drugs.  Which means that because of the drugs my bowels stopped working.  I weighed approximately 89 lbs. and was not getting rid of the drugs.

According to their records I was being given 20 mg. of Methadone, up to 150 mg. of Demerol every three hours, Percocete, Levopram, 60 mg. of Restoril, 3 mg. of Klonapin, 3 mg. of Xanax, Prednisone, Propulsid, .5 mg. of Digitalis, Verpamil SR 240, Ultram, Wellbutrin, Paxil, Nicoderm ad nauseum…

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