There was a specific point of things going wrong health-wise in 1995/96, coinciding with the point of rupture. From there I fought through debilitating illness while being told there was medically nothing wrong with me.

Doctors relied on blood test results that were 100% unreliable in my case, stating with confidence the tests were 99% accurate – never considering I might have been that 1% they don’t work for.

In recent years a teenager created a test for pancreatic cancer that was more accurate, more accurate in early stages, was faster, and less expensive than the traditional test. He stated they’d been relying on 60-year-old technology. The till then unchallenged old technology standard was defended as being reliable.

I have connected with many thousands of women around the world that became ill and experienced rupture or other complications from the breast implants. Of those the incidence of women that test results were ‘normal’ for is quite staggering, given they were all very ill and symptomatic. Most, like myself, virtually bedridden.

You might wonder how I’m so certain my test results were 100% inaccurate. Blood tests for infection and inflammation were always ‘normal,’ yet scopes, x-rays, or surgery, confirmed acute inflammation and infection 100% of the time. Though those tests were never offered in a timely manner.

Even though it had been proven historically and consistently that blood tests had failed to reflect what was going on in my body, doctors continued to spout their party-line, “these tests are 99% accurate … if there’s even a small amount of infection or inflammation anywhere in your body, these will pick it up.”

Except they didn’t pick it up … not once.

It’s time for western medicine to revisit some of the tests it relies so heavily on. And, even more importantly, to SEE patients not just test results. If the symptoms a patient is presenting with are not consistent with lab results doctors might want to think outside the box instead of deciding a patient’s illness is in their head. 

The bigger danger of that labelling is that doctors stop looking. Leaked silicone had nearly four years longer to migrate more deeply into my chest wall, past the point I’d become seriously ill.

Just for the record, I DO NOT BELIEVE that the tests for inflammation and infection are 99% accurate, nor is it my intention to undermine good doctors operating within a flawed system. A false belief in the reliability of these tests is resulting in far too many people not being properly diagnosed. Hopefully some brilliant young mind will revisit them SOON.

ALL MISSED because doctors relied too heavily on test results:

• 19 years – bone infection
• 16 years – ruptured silicone breast implants
• 2 years interstitial cystitis
• acute inflammation specific to silicone

Doctors should also have an awareness that in people with autoimmune illness there are many for whom their immune systems are not launching an appropriate response. It should be a RED FLAG that there’s nothing reflected in lab results when there should be!