I am on here as a finally flat and proud previvor, fortunate enough to have both breasts removed at 29 before they tried to kill me.
I wanted to share my story of being forced by my surgeon to agree to unwanted silicone implants or she would cancel the surgery, an experience that I have discovered is called flat denial and is happening to many women in various forms.
I asked not to have them, I did not know the term "aesthetic flat closure’’ but I was quite clear about my position, yet the two surgeons operating on me arrogantly prioritised their own beliefs about what I ought to look like in the nude above my wishes, welfare, comfort, muscle function and ability to sleep on my front.
When I was told they strip your pectoral muscle off its attachment and shove the foreign body underneath it, I remember thinking that didn’t sound very smart or very comfortable. I was right.
Completely incompatible with my active lifestyle, the hard cold mounds were dented across the middle after just a few weeks where my muscles tugged uncomfortably with every arm movement. They call it animation deformity, a perfectly apt name for the grotesque puppet show that goes on beneath your shirt with vigorous arm movements. It was like two ferrets fighting in a sack.
Because of the ugly rippling, I had to wear padded bras to cover them up, which added to the weight and bulk.
There were no advantages to me of having this toxic foreign material in my body, I don’t even drink out of plastic bottles FFS, and none of the reasons I have heard for putting them in were about me, it was purely centred around what people I don’t know, MIGHT think, IF they saw me naked.
Not a good enough reason in my opinion to rob an athletic young woman of her full pectoral muscle function. I resented the demeaning and misogynistic expectation that women should simply accept limited function and discomfort in order to conform to a particular aesthetic.
Even on the day of removal when I asked if my muscle function would fully recover, the surgeon denied subpectoral implant placement compromised function. I wonder how many women have ever been asked?
Certainly nobody asked me if I could lift as heavy, swim as well, play racquet sports or push my toddler’s buggy with the same strength.
The first time I asked for them removed the surgeon laughed, like he thought I was joking. He refused.
Every time a new health scare came out about silicone implants I called the clinic hoping it would be the ones I had so I could get them out.
Finally, 14 years later I am delighted to have finally found a surgeon willing to respect my wishes and remove them - or maybe it is just that with growing rates of lymphoma linked to the allergan textured implants I had, a directive has been issued for the NHS to remove them on request.
My chest isn’t perfectly smooth, and I will not win any bikini contests, but I am overjoyed to have them out.
My chest feels soft and warm again, not cold and hard like touching a corpse over the implants.
I have always been incredibly grateful for my original risk reducing mastectomies - I didn’t lose anything, I gained decades of additional life and immeasurable psychological relief, but when will women start being listed to about their preferred surgical outcome?
Thanks for letting me get even more weight off my chest
B xxx