"I am a miraculous but I lived seven years of ordeal"

Subscribers article

Breast implants, sub-urethral strips, permanent contraception Essure … Three women testify to the ordeal they experienced following the installation of a medical device. They have been explanted, but keep the body bruised.

• Joëlle Manighetti, 62, former health executive, PIP prosthesis.

"I remember exactly when my prosthesis started to ooze. It was my brother's wedding day, at the end of 2009, in the middle of dinner. I felt moisture under my arm. Three weeks before, I had removed the left bad after cancer. At Gustave-Roussy, in Villejuif [Val-de-Marne], the center of cancer control where I was followed since the summer, I was confirmed that liquid oozed from the scar. I was made a point and made an appointment after the holidays.

In early January, a stage 3 hull – on a scale of 4 – was already formed. The bad was hard, painful, and the surgeon did not understand what was happening. We got the answer when the PIP case broke out at the end of March [le fabricant avait rempli ses prothèses d’un gel de silicone low cost non homologué]. When I saw the surgeon the next day, he told me right away that the implant had to be removed.

At the time of the operation, the prosthesis had already lost 10% of its volume. Silicone had spread in the body. The surgeon cleaned up everything and put a new prosthesis on me. But the tissues, too inflamed, could not heal. He opened again, cleaned, and put down a drain to clean up the whole thing. It did not work. Mid-June, he removed everything.

At the end of the summer, when I learned that I could not use Diep [une alternative qui permet de reconstruire le sein sans prothèse en prélevant des tissus et de la graisse sur le ventre]I was demoralized. He offered me a new denture with a dorsal flap, but I refused. In the meantime, I had learned that they had to be changed every ten years and I had documented these CE marking stories. Although I had been a health executive, and participated in clinical research on AIDS, I was far from suspecting that medical implants were out of control.

Finally, six years ago, I had a back flap with four lipomodelages, but the ordeal continues. I have physio sessions once a week, but nothing calms the pain. I have half of the chest permanently in a vice. I feel compressed even when I speak. What drives me crazy is that it was not caused by my cancer, but by this prosthetic crap.