Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
SPECIAL EPISODE---BII HOPE FOR HEALING
36 Plays1 year ago
This episode features expert and advocate Lisa Haskins-Pearson and her incredible story of Breast Implant Illness. In this episode, she makes a special announcement that will change the lives of millions of people. Please join us for this special episode and amazing story of BII. Contact us at biihealingisreal@gmail.com or https://integrativehopeforhealing.org.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Episode 4
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the fourth episode of Breast and Flight Illness Healing. This is Cecily Henderson, your host. Today is a very special podcast.
Lisa's BII Journey in Austin
00:00:15
Speaker
I am in Austin, Texas with a very lovely lady, Lisa Haskin-Peersons. We came to Austin in January to do an interview with Jenny Lee, KVNO,
00:00:31
Speaker
at Western TV. And we just had a wonderful time. It was just an amazing experience. And Lisa shared her story with me. It was so incredible. And I wanted to share with you her story and also a special announcement. So stay tuned until the end of the show for this wonderful, amazing announcement.
Experiencing and Identifying BII Symptoms
00:00:55
Speaker
So Lisa, I wanted you to go ahead and introduce yourself.
00:00:59
Speaker
And tell us about your BII journey. Absolutely. So my BII journey has now extended 20 years. I actually got mentor saline smooth implants for fun in 2004 and immediately had pain under my left implant, under my breast. It felt like it was stuck to my chest wall.
00:01:24
Speaker
And it never went away. I started developing symptoms and flash forward to 2008, four years later, I went from never being sick to all of a sudden having seen 30 specialists, cardiologists, gastroenterologists, neurologists, cognitive specialists. And I could not figure out what was going wrong, but I was convinced my implants were behind it.
00:01:48
Speaker
And so when my neurologist said she was testing me for a rare form of MS, I jumped on Google, and I put in MS breast implants. And there it was. And not to date me, but y'all keep doing this. 20 years ago, I landed on a Yahoo email group titled Saline Support. So shout out if I have any Saline Support people on here. It's been a while.
00:02:16
Speaker
And through that, I realized I'm right. It's saline breast implants make you sick too. So I landed in Atlanta, Georgia with a plastic surgeon that was an early activist because she said something that made sense to me. You got to get the full capsules out. Don't leave them in. You'll continue to be sick. Unfortunately, in the less than two weeks between me scheduling with her and the explant date, a tumor popped up on my right breast.
00:02:44
Speaker
And so I did make the decision to have her just remove it with my implants. I wasn't convinced it was cancer. And the surgery was difficult. My left implant had mold and it had become part of my chest wall.
Complications and Continued Struggles
00:03:00
Speaker
She had to extract muscle and bone in the exact area of my pain where it was stuck to my wall.
00:03:07
Speaker
And then in removing the tumor, I'm not sure still to this day what caused the excessive bleeding, but I lost 300 cc's of blood, almost died on the table, and she turned to saving my life. What she did not tell me, and I wish she had, was she ended up leaving the full capsules in my body. And so I went around after my cancer treatment, confounded because I felt it, I only felt the one on the left.
00:03:35
Speaker
But I went around for 15 years telling doctors, there's a mass in my left chest wall. I feel it. And please, won't someone help me? And, you know, when my cancer came back in 2018, I mean, the real betrayal that I feel now.
00:03:54
Speaker
is the capsules were there on my imaging the entire time, the entire time. So even when my cancer came back, and I'm begging the cancer doctors, please look closer at my chest. There's something in my chest. Well, it must be my cancer. They saw them, and they did nothing, and they didn't tell me. And it got worse from there. The cancer story in 2018 is a dark, ugly story, to be honest.
00:04:24
Speaker
I'm gonna table that for another podcast because unfortunately we've got some new information on that. So that being said, let's table the dark ugly and go to hope, right? So finally last year, after that journey, I found Dr. Khan
00:04:47
Speaker
And I'm not going to promote any one specific doctor, but he did the residual capsilectomy and found not only the mass I felt on the left, which ended up being nine and a half by nine and a half centimeters. I mean, huge. And the one on the right, eight by six and a half. So like in the cancer world, if they saw these, you're automatically stage four. These are so much masses that were in my chest wall.
00:05:13
Speaker
But because, and this isn't important because, because there's no ICD-11 code giving validity to the illness caused by breast implants and capsules, then there is no criminality to ignore those in my chest wall, even when my cancer came back and I begged for someone to look at the mass I felt in my chest wall. And so, you know, I can be angry or I could do something.
Turning to Functional Medicine for Healing
00:05:39
Speaker
The great news is when I was denied the care I need when my cancer came back, I turned to functional medicine. And did chemo an alternative way? It put me in remission this long.
00:05:51
Speaker
And that is my goal, to give hope to others through this journey. Women, if some of you explanted and you're still symptomatic, you may still have capsules in your chest. Well, whoever you go to, there's so many good doctors out there now. Whoever you go to, have them show evidence that they got everything. Have them show evidence. That's all I'm telling you because I promise you,
00:06:16
Speaker
you aren't going to be told on your imaging that those capsules are still in your wall. Unfortunately, not until, not until there's an illness to tie it to, will there be incentive for them to tell us that and do anything about it. So. Oh my goodness. Wow. How are you doing now?
00:06:36
Speaker
Well, it's a moving target. How about I tell you in a bit? Because we're still unsure. But what I'm doing now is just focusing on the future. And so what I decided to do after I was handed my life back
00:06:53
Speaker
I can tell you that my symptoms between that and mouth surgery that I had last year, 80% of my pain is gone. And after 20 years, for those of you suffering to believe your pain could go away, that's hope right there, whatever I'm pacing.
00:07:08
Speaker
So yeah, what I feel now is just I want to do everything I can to make sure that other women don't have to go through what I went through. Your story is just incredible. I can't believe all the things that you've gone through. I mean, it should be made into a movie.
Advocacy and Nonprofit Initiatives
00:07:28
Speaker
I was never telling you this. You should have your story made into a movie because it is so incredible. Right?
00:07:38
Speaker
Now, I want you to talk a little bit about your efforts in helping women who are sick with the eye so that they don't go through the same experience that you have gone through. Absolutely. So right after my residual catalectomy last year, I started the efforts towards a nonprofit, which now I invested my own money in it and I didn't care because
00:08:05
Speaker
I just thought I can do this right now and other women can't afford the functional medicine I use to get well and there's something wrong about that. So I just I wanted to do something. So I've started integrative hope for healing with two
00:08:19
Speaker
other beautiful activists. And we've got three main initiatives that we're focusing on. And we want to open the door and invite people to come and join us and collaborate with us because I think everyone's doing so many cool things on their own, but there's power together. So the first initiative that we are planning for 2025
00:08:42
Speaker
is a peaceful demonstration, a march, so to speak, preferably at capitals across the nation and internationally, for those of you watching. But the goal of that march, we want to be unified to
00:08:58
Speaker
start demanding the ICD-11 code because until we have validity for breast implant illness, we will get turned away by doctors saying there is no such thing. And that's just the sad truth. So for those of you that want to be a part of something and make a difference, connect with us because we want the more the merrier. And I believe the more locations we have, the more likely we're going to get national coverage and the more likely we'll reach our goal.
00:09:27
Speaker
Absolutely. And we'll provide all of that information at the end of the podcast. Absolutely. So goal number two is research-based. So I came from a role in a hospital where I was both a vice president of HR and an ethics compliance officer handling
00:09:47
Speaker
stark regulations and HIPAA compliance. And so I also have
Research and Validation of BII
00:09:52
Speaker
run statistics, done correlation around employee engagement. So I feel very passionate that I want to build a portal on our site and start collecting research data. Of course, since it's medically based, it has to be HIPAA compliant. Luckily I know about that.
00:10:10
Speaker
And the goal of that is to start with showing how does this illness progress. And then once there is an actual code for the illness, in addition to all these symptoms that are cited, I believe that there are many illnesses that we're getting, Epstein-Barr, thoracic outlet, mouths, I could go on. But the list of things that we get at a higher than normal rate compared to the average population
00:10:40
Speaker
Let's start putting some research around that. A lot of us are interested in research. And I say, join us because we're going to take the hard one. We want to provide research around functional medicine and knowing how controversial breast implant illness is, knowing how controversial functional medicine is, you know, it will be targeted and discredited. So I feel we have to do it right from the get-go. I am not
00:11:10
Speaker
versed, and I can't do clinical trials if we ever reach that point. I hope we find the right partners, or I'm going to have to don my education cap again. But for those of you doing research on the traditional side, that's why we've labeled it integrative. The two should be working side by side, and other countries are doing this. And so that opens the door to the third initiative that's near and dear to my heart.
Creating a Healing Retreat
00:11:38
Speaker
In Mexico, they have many clinics like the one Max Gerson who started a juicing protocol started, where patients can go and be immersed in a detox, chemical-free environment and start having supplemental methods applied. And so my big audacious goal is to have a home for healing along those lines, maybe in Hill Country, Austin,
00:12:05
Speaker
where patients can come for three to four weeks and they can experience firsthand the power that comes from the chemical-free detox and giving them the tools they need to be able to continue these things at home because, you know, a lot of people don't try this because they don't know how and they're overwhelmed by it or like me, they did it wrong. I detoxed for 15 years not knowing those are in my body
00:12:34
Speaker
And I, from the mouse surgery, know that I have migrated silicone. It didn't get out, I just spread it around. So I just think that there's a reason that Mexico happens to be one of those countries that's publishing in medical journals that things like vitamin C infusions, which is a huge part of my healing, cure cancer.
Cecily's Business Rebranding
00:12:58
Speaker
And so whatever route you take to get better,
00:13:02
Speaker
We want to make it available to the masses somehow and pharmaceutical companies are not going to prove that it works. The research will have to come from other funding. And so we've got ideas for that too, but let's see what God provides. What an inspiring idea. And I know you're going to make it happen because you are that kind of person and how many lives that you will change.
00:13:30
Speaker
Thank you. I'm excited. It gives me a forward goal for all of us stuck in the middle, still waiting through this. I know now that I am finally starting to heal and whatever I'm facing, the answers to continued healing are within some of the things that we're all already doing. So it's an exciting time.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, your story and how you started, you know, this nonprofit when I first met you and the idea was just so inspiring to me. Over the last couple of months, I have been listening to women who are very, very sick or
00:14:15
Speaker
you know, are scared to explant because they don't know if they're going to get any better. And just hearing your story is so inspiring to me and could be to them because it is a hope for healing and that word hope.
00:14:30
Speaker
So because of that inspiration, I have gone through a process now where I am changing my business name and the new name will be breast implant illness hope for healing.
00:14:50
Speaker
There's a lot of organizations out there that offer healing for breast implant illness, but we wanted to do something, you know, just a little different. So not only are we going to focus on the physical aspect of healing, but also the emotional and spiritual wellness as well.
Unifying and Supporting BII Sufferers
00:15:10
Speaker
And the reason that hope is in the name is just to provide unity, right? That's what you're talking about, to stand up for each other, bringing hope and light into each other's lives. It doesn't matter if your heritage, your nationality, your creed, we want to encompass all beliefs, faiths, and goodwill.
00:15:35
Speaker
And this is our goal, is to be able to unify each other. And I think that this integrative hope for healing and working together will do this and really make a change in women's lives that have breast and plant illness. I agree. And that's what it's about. I think there's power in numbers and coming together makes things more likely that we're going to make the changes that we want to see with this illness.
00:16:06
Speaker
I believe it.
Call to Action and Conclusion
00:16:08
Speaker
I've seen healing in my life and the inspiration that I've had to heal myself through functional medicine as a functional medicine practitioner and also helping other women heal and take those proper steps that I never knew about and you didn't know about, right? Right.
00:16:29
Speaker
We want to help women not have to go through what we went through. Right. And not have to feel alone through it. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thank you everyone for joining us today. If you need help, please contact us if you would like to help with the March for next year.
00:16:52
Speaker
or if you are planning on explanting, or if you're still sick, even after explanting, please contact us. We will have the information at the end of this podcast. My website is biihealingisreal.com. So thank you again, and thank you, Lisa, for joining me. Thank you, Cecily. Bye-bye. All right, God bless.