Amy revisits her journey with breast implants, sharing the unexpected turn of deciding to have them reinserted after previous removal due to concerns about breast implant illness. With raw honesty, she explores the intricate balance between physical appearance and mental health, offering a nuanced perspective on cosmetic surgery.

This episode unpacks the emotional and physical layers of her experiences, reflecting on the influence of societal expectations, the pursuit of confidence, and the complex relationship with one's body.

Key Takeaways:

Insights into the controversial and personal nature of breast implant illness.
The reasons behind changing one’s mind on significant health decisions.
The deep impact of body image on personal relationships and self-confidence.
The value of community and informed decision-making in cosmetic surgery.

“I ended up having my implants put back in. And, again, I don't owe anyone, I guess an explanation. But I wanted to come on here because I feel like there are other people that maybe you've been on the fence. And I would still suggest this to you, and that is one, do your homework, go check out breast implant illness, learn all about it.” - Amy Ledin

Listen to Amy’s previous episode 88 about Breast Implant Illness with Laura Krosky

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Transcript:

Amy Ledin 0:00

After my explant, I did try a fat transfer to my boobs. Because like I said, after I got the explant and realized, oh my gosh, I'm like so flat that I mean, I just looked like a boy like I'm so flat that maybe a fat transfer would work. And I'm here to tell you do not waste your money ladies, if you are listening to this, it was not only the biggest waste of money, but ended up costing me more in that. What happened following the fat transfer is I ended up getting over 22 cysts in my breast.

Amy Ledin 0:42

What are you doing to create your dream life or your best self? Why do we see some thrive through challenges while others struggle? Welcome to Epic, a podcast where I talk about the main apps in my life that have helped me in creating my best self, faith, family forgiveness, food, fitness, and formula. Hi, my name is Amy Levine. And most would say that I've had my fair share of struggles, whether it was placing my baby for adoption at 18, facing my marriage ending affair or battling stage four cancer for almost seven years, it's safe to say that I've been through a lot. Join me as I take you through my story, my journeys and share with you the tactical strategies every single week that will help you thrive and overcome anything you face. That's right, I'm going to show you how to create a future self that you'll be proud of. So buckle up, get ready for the ride as I take you through my story and bring other guests on that have helped me along the way.

Amy Ledin 1:35

So you might have read the title and thought what the heck, I thought Amy did an entire podcast, all about breast implant illness, having an explant, and you know, the end. And you know what? You're right. I did do an entire podcast on that. And I would still encourage anyone to go back and listen to that. And honestly, I really debated even doing this episode because it is my personal life. And I know that there will be some judgment, I know that there will be some questions. But I have always said from day one that I want to be an open book, I want to share everything with you and be as authentic as possible. So with that is sharing this part of my life. And yes, I did get my implants put back in. So let's talk all about it, why I did this. Because I know that for some of you that have followed me, maybe you went down this path. I've had people that have DM-ed me about getting an explant and hey, I'll be the first to say that I went down that rabbit hole and I do believe that there is such a thing as breast implant illness. I don't think I was one of those people that was affected by it. So, let's just dive into it. Let me just kind of rewind a little bit. So if you are new to the podcast, welcome. My name is Amy Ledin. I am a 10-year cancer survivor. I am a birth mother, I am a divorcee, second marriage, I am a blended family mom. Like those are some of my and I am a fitness coach. And so if you've been along for the journey I've kind of touched on every single topic on here including breast implant illness. Now, I had implants for over, gosh,. 19 years I had two different sets. I got my first set after losing 90 pounds. I was probably a double A if that I had no breast tissue, had my, got my first set in and honestly did it for just my own confidence. I just wanted to feel good in my clothes. I wanted to feel and I really don't like using this word all the time. But I wanted to feel womanly. I wanted to feel feminine. I wanted to feel sexy in my own body. And I looked like a you know, 12-year-old pubescent boy or pubescent girl, maybe. And so I had decided to get implants, I really never had any issues. And I like to say that because now that we know with my chemo and the effects of that, that really was what was causing some of my issues. As we saw once you know, I got my implants taken out. So I had my first set for almost 10 years. And then you know, as most people know, with implants, they should be replaced, eventually. I was going in to have a tummy tuck. I've been very open about this. You know, so what, 10 years of having implants. You know, I'd made a goal that if I was able to keep my weight off for you know, five-plus years that I would treat myself to a tummy tuck I had more than a five-inch you know, in length like down a huge piece of skin that I could basically roll up in my pants, and it was just paper thin, you know, stretch marks, all that. And, you know, it was a personal decision that I wanted to save my money and have a tummy tuck. So while they were in there, we knew that we were going to replace the implants. And my biggest mistake, I will be honest, was then going a little bit bigger. So I went from having, you know, like 285, maybe 300 CCs, I think, is what I had the first time to 550. Now, let me just say, I didn't know that they were 550 CCs, they were actually, on my card, 450 but when I got my explant, they weighed my implants, and they had been overfilled to 550. So I had those in for about five years, maybe six years. And then I started hearing about breast implant illness. Now, as I said, at the beginning, I know that it is a real thing. There are 150,000 plus people in a group on Facebook called breast implant illness that many of these women share their stories. And as I started to read through some of the symptoms, and as I said, in my last podcast, I really did not have any symptoms other than neuropathy. didn't sleep very well at night. But keep in mind, I also was on a lot of compounds, including chemotherapy and chemotherapy, one of the biggest ones with that is having neuropathy. But with me getting ready to have lung surgery, back in 2021, I believe it was, I knew that if I was going to be going in to have this big lung surgery, this might be the time since I'm already going to be put under anesthesia, I would just get the explant and just do it all at once. And you know, I didn't want to have all these symptoms and deal with all the things that others were dealing with, in addition to honestly, my implants just felt so big, you know, and really just, you know, they weren't, they weren't serving me anymore. And I knew that I did want to at least eliminate what I thought was neuropathy from the implants. Now keep in mind, about a week prior to my surgery, I ended up finding out that I was in remission, like nothing short of a miracle. And so they stopped my chemo then, about about a week before my surgery. Now keep in mind these things, you know, can stay in your system. And you can have, you can actually even have neuropathy long term from chemo even after you stopped taking it. But I got taken off the chemo. And the reason why I mentioned this is because now looking back, I'm sure as I was getting the explant, in addition to like, also removing all of these, you know, compounds from my body, of course, I woke up from surgery feeling amazing. And I did, you know, I slept well for, gosh, that first week afterwards, it was like I was, you know, in heaven feeling so good and I really had no regrets. And honestly, if I had the symptoms that so many people have had, I would definitely suggest that you go and get it checked out and consider getting an explant.

Amy Ledin 8:16

Now fast forward. And I've shared this on our social media, you know, probably about a year ago, I had posted a kind of post an annual post, just like on the anniversary of my explant just talking about it, just putting more, you know, awareness around it. And someone had posted saying, hey, you really should check out this other group. I know you're in the Breast Implant Illness group, but check out this other group called Breast Implant-Explant Regret. So I decided to check it out because, you know, full disclosure, and I like I said, I always want to be completely open and honest with you, I had a really hard time going from having implants for you know, 19 years or just having boobs, to going back to not just like nothing, I'm talking, I was flat as a pancake, like no breast tissue, because when they did that explant, they also did a lift took off any excess skin. So I really had nothing like I couldn't even you know, bralettes were loose on me. You know, I started buying actually in the little girl section, you know, I started wearing Leilani's bras and she was like 10 years old. And those were fitting me and it just started to, you know, bug me and weigh on me and again, like this is an elective surgery. So it's not like I'm just going to jump into doing it. But it had been at the back of my mind for a while especially because my neuropathy was back, you know, as back on chemotherapy and all of those what I thought were breast implant illness symptoms, were no longer you know, I didn't have implants anymore. I'd had the en bloc I'd had everything taken care of and I still was having the exact same things that I was having before and now I was left with no boobs. And hey, I get it, you might be listening to me going, what's the big deal? You know, I don't even know why you would risk doing that. And hey, I respect your opinions. And I appreciate that. And you know what, for other people, it's like, I'd say, h ey, you, you have to live with what you, you know, decide. And I do too. And so we just got back from a vacation this last year. And again, I just was like, man, I just, it's making me self-conscious. You know, Erik and I, we've always kind of bragged about how amazing our sex life is. And it still was amazing but I was getting to a place where I wouldn't take, I hadn't taken my shirt off since the explant, I wouldn't let Erik touch me there. I really liked either to keep my T-shirt or my bra on because it just didn't, you know, feel confident anymore and it was taking a toll. Really more on me. I mean, Erik has always said to me, hey, listen, I am not, I'm not a boob guy. Like it doesn't, you know, it doesn't faze me. You can have huge boobs, no boobs, I love you the way you are, in fact, over these last couple of years, he's always made me feel so attractive. He's said, hey, I love the athletic look, you know, but he made a point to say to me, Listen, you do what makes you feel best. Like, I can sit here and I can tell you how amazing you look. And I don't even notice that you don't have boobs or whatever. But it's really going to come back to you. But I just kind of left that in the back of my mind.

Amy Ledin 11:41

Now, fast forward, after my explant, I did try a fat transfer to my boobs, because like I said, you know, after I got the explant and realized, oh my gosh, I'm like so flat that I mean, I just looked like a boy like I'm so flat, that maybe a fat transfer would work. And I'm here to tell you do not waste your money. Ladies, if you are listening to this, it was not only the biggest waste of money, but ended up costing me more in that what happened following the fat transfer is I ended up getting over 22 cysts in my breasts. Now this comes as a blessing in disguise, because here's the thing, we initially thought that all these cysts were from the fat transfer. And so, it forced us to go in and do testing. And we ended up needing to do biopsy because I ended up having three of the 22 cysts that actually were not the same as the other. So what they gather now is that 19 of those cysts were from fat transfer, they were clear, we didn't have blooded in them, no issues. The other three, honestly as finding them, were kind of the blessing in disguise in that, hey, if it wasn't for the fat transfer, I probably wouldn't have had this on alert in terms of getting a mammogram, getting ultrasounds, getting an MRI, like I wouldn't have even thought to do the due diligence there without that fat transfer. Now, I get CT scans, and I get PET scans all the time. So I wasn't really worried about cancer, per se. But I did wonder why I had, you know, these lumps in my chest. So we knew that we were getting to a point where I was going to have them removed, because there were three of them specifically that were rather large. And they were showing through like even my shirts, and you know, because again, I have no chest and I'm rather lean. So you can pretty much see the lumps in my chest. So we already knew that that was going to be a surgery coming up. And so I had just mentioned it to Erik that I was like, hey, you know, I really would like to consider getting my implants put back in, I'm not sure what that will look like. And I'll be you know, I even said I'm like, man, I feel like a phony that I've been, you know, I've promoted breast implant illness. And I have, you know, talked to several ladies about this and here I am wanting you know, to get them back in. Of course Erik was like, hey, you know what, you know, you and you know what you feel like and you are the one that has to live with it. So that is totally up to you. I will fully support that if you want to do that they're going to be going in for surgery to remove these. If we can coordinate it with a plastic surgeon like I'm 100% on board for you. You know, and I said to him, I'm like, here's the deal. If I do do it this time there is going to be you know, I'm not going to go as big I'm not looking to have like these implant-looking boobs. I just want to have a little something, you know, in my chest just to even fill out my sports bras. And so I had decided to go down that path I met with a few doctors, because we knew that we were going to be dealing with also working with my oncologist, even though they were not cancer as they were just working together to coordinate me having the cyst removed. And so long story short, about eight weeks ago, I ended up having my implants put back in. And, again, I don't owe anyone, I guess an explanation. But I wanted to come on here because I feel like there are other people that maybe you've been on the fence, and I would still suggest this to you. And that is one, do your homework, go check out breast implant illness, learn all about it. What I have learned through this because I've gone down the deep rabbit hole of of seeing this because they do polls, not in the breast implant illness group, but other groups where they've asked, hey, after you had these taken out, did your symptoms go away? And what they have found more times than not that this has actually been on hormonal, it's right around that perimenopause, menopause phase of life. And in addition to that, so that's one reason why some of these people have these elevated symptoms. But the other would be that you have autoimmune issues, if you already have autoimmune issues. For some reason, this tends to trigger a lot of these other symptoms by having a foreign object in your body. Now fortunately, for me, like I said, you know, my neuropathy, and things we found out was really from my chemotherapy, I didn't have any of the other issues or symptoms. So that's why I decided to re-implant. Now this time, I went much smaller, I have 265 CC, so I'm probably a maybe a full B now but hey, it is better than nothing. And again, this is not to judge anyone that has gotten them taken out. And, you know, they feel like it is the best decision for them, hey, I, more power to you, I think that's great, I fully support you. But this I wanted to do this episode, because there are still people that are maybe on the fence, or maybe you have implants, and you're thinking that's going to be the smoking gun or the solution to solve all of your other issues. I'm here to say do your homework, maybe it will be the solution for you. Maybe it will help you and maybe it won't. I just don't want you to go down the path I did, which was doing all these things, spending the money on having an explant to only end up with the same I had the neuropathy, still. I still had all the other you know, I really not other big symptoms other than really the neuropathy. And they still all came back about two weeks post explant. So maybe this episode more than anything is just going to be you listening to me go, okay, this has no, you know, I cannot relate to this at all. Or maybe you're like, hey, I have a friend that's considering it. Or, hey, Amy, I'm just happy that you're honest with me and share this with me because maybe down the path down the road, this will be something I want to share with others. And like I said, please still go listen to my breast implant illness one, all on that because the guests that I had on, she had legit issues that did go away and has not come back since having her explant. So I hope this just helps you. This is just something that has been, it's been heavy on me. Because I'm like, I want to share this. I don't want people to you know, see me on social media and go did she or didn't she I swear she was flat before now she's got some boobs. I mean, people I swear y'all, y'all pay attention to everything. I can have a book in the background of a video, a 10-second video and I will get a DM and go, hey, what's the name of that book there? Or hey, did you? You know. So I get it. We're all nosy. We all like to know everybody's business. So I just wanted to put this out there. And then of course, if you have any questions for me, shoot me an email, send me a DM. I am an open book. I am more than you know, willing to share the ups, the downs, but just most importantly, I just wanted to be really honest with my audience in sharing this with you today.

Amy Ledin 19:31

Okay, I'm on a mission. As you know, if you've been following along, I have a goal to be at top 100 podcasts. And it's less about that top 100 and more about I want to make an impact. I want more people to hear F* It! and learn from all of the mistakes that I've made, along with me bringing on really special guests for you. So my ask here is this. I want you to screenshot this episode today and share it on your social media, share it with a friend, you know, tag me in it. Go give me a review, of course, if you're really feeling it, and rate me. You know, this is the only way things are gonna get seen here. And in a big world of tons and tons of podcasts, I'm hoping that you're going to choose mine and help me on my mission.

#5for50 #5for50FamilyEdition #AmyLedin #AmyLedin.com #ErikLedin #LeanBodiesConsulting #LBC #Kamele #KamelePerez

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the hosts and guests on this podcast do not necessarily represent or reflect the official policy, opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of Disenyo.co LLC and its employees.

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