Episode 51: From Implants to Insight: A Comprehensive Look at Breast Implant Illness with Casey Araujo

Foreign.

Doctor Rob Whitfield, the board certified plastic.

Surgeon specializing in explant surgery. Breast implant illness is a topic that.

Is not often talked enough about, especially in medical community, but is something that affects many women. In this podcast I'll be discussing the latest research, treatment options and personal stories of women who have undergone explant surgery in an effort to heal breast implant illness. In this podcast, we'll explore the symptoms.

Of breast implant illness and delve into.

The latest surgical techniques for explantation and the recovery process. Whether you are currently experiencing breast implant illness or are considering explant surgery, this podcast is a valuable resource for anyone looking to take control of their health and wellness. So let's dive in. Before we get started today, I wanted.

To tell you about a way you can speed your healing and to begin reverse aging in your body. Reducing inflammation is especially important for women with breast implant illness. In fact, one of the most important pre explant surgery steps we take is to get rid of as much inflammation in the body as possible. So I've created a special inflammation support bundle to give you everything you need to reduce inflammation as quickly as possible. Don't let inflammation hold you back. Visit drrobsolutions.com now and grab the inflammation support bundle today again, you can get it@drrobsolutions.com hey, it's Dr.

Rob and today I have a very special guest, one of my own patients, Casey Arugio, and we're going to interview her and listen to her story. She's wonderful and welcome.

Casey, thank you so much for having me. Dr. Rob, this is my first podcast so I'm excited and nervous but excited to chat about my journey and talk with you today.

Yeah, there's nothing to be nervous about. When we started doing this, I felt I would be terrible at it. I don't know that I've improved dramatically, but it is fun to talk to everybody and basically for the audience I want you to just to explain how you arrived at coming to visit us in Austin and not so much a choice for me but like your choice to go ahead and do an explant.

An explant. So to start my implant explant journey, I got implants in 2016. I was 23 years old, didn't have much research, didn't do much research. I was young and all I knew is I wanted bigger breasts. Always wanted bigger breasts since middle school. All the women around me had big breasts growing up, half of my friend group and that's just something I always knew That I wanted after college, I was going to work and save and get my breast implants. And that's what I did. I did saline under the muscle, and I wanted to see. Ended up with a full double D. And so I just wanted to even out my body. I have hips and a lower half, but wanted more of a bustier upper half, feel more feminine or womanly, which is silly to say now. So that was in 2016. And within six months after getting my implants, I had a lot of inflammation. I blew up, I want to say about 30 pounds. And all my life I struggled to gain weight. So when I blew up 30 pounds, clothes started feeling different. I'm like, all right, maybe it's just after surgery, my body just needs to relax. It's getting used to the implants, but there was just so much inflammation. And then I started to get a lot of rashes, chronic fatigue. And then as the years went on, I just got more and more symptoms, and I just thought, I'm getting older. This is part of life. Hormones are changing, Things are changing. It's all normal. But I couldn't get rid of the inflammation weight.

When you made the choice for surgery, like you said, you're a young person, I always found it very difficult to explain this situation When I had young people come speak to me, and so everybody listening. My background's in cancer, so I didn't have that many young people that, you know, Casey's describing between, like, ages of 18 and 23, because normally I wouldn't see them because I worked in a oncologic reconstructive environment, and most of the people would be older. The youngest person I ever had was 24, which was obviously very young. And that's a very different kind of situation and discussion. But when you were explained to it as a young person and say, I want to change my breast size, Typically when we're younger, we're leaner. We haven't experienced weight gain, weight loss normally, not all the time. And so were you really lean at that time?

I was very lean. Size 0202, 120 pounds, 118 pounds, very lean. And so I just wanted to be more proportioned. And I got breast implants, and at first I didn't think they were so big, but then as time went on, I realized that the focal point were my breasts. And I didn't like that feeling. I didn't get them for attention. I just got them because I wanted a fuller chest. So I was very lean. And then gaining the 30 pounds, it was a shock to me. My clothes didn't fit. Now I was a 6 going into an 8 when I was always a 02. So I just felt like it wasn't like I felt like I was living in someone else's body.

And that was all quickly, right?

It happened very quick. Yes.

So that's unusual. Not that it can't, but I don't see that routinely. So that's one thing that's very unique. And then for the listeners, a lot of people travel in to have fat transfer surgery with me. But when someone's super fit or lean, especially early when they're considering this choice, as Casey was, it's very hard to do fat transfers on them. So I think a lot of discussion revolves around, well, why didn't Casey have a fat transfer? She didn't probably have enough body fat to actually. And then the. From the surgical perspective, if someone who's really, really lean or fit wants to have a 2 cup size change, but they're very, very low body fat or low bmi, it's very hard for the surgeons to accommodate that request. So if someone comes in later in life and they've had children or weight gain or both, you know, we'll say in their 30s or something like that, then it's a much more entertainable option for patients to have. And then having done thousands of fat transfers, of course, in my practice that gets explained routinely because we have people come in who don't want to have implants and they're of that age and now they have a little bit more either weight or body fat or both. And then they're like, how about reshaping me and using that fat for breast augmentation? And then that's a discussion to have. And then that leads to other programs. But in your situation, you develop this really acute inflammation relatively quick within six months.

And I just blew up. And everyone around me noticed it too. Within my face, my, my midsection, my arms, everything. And I just felt like I was living in someone else's body. And then all other symptoms started to come. Hormonal issues, a lot of dry skin, very dry skin, dry mouth. And then I started to notice the swollen lymph nodes in my neck. And I was like, what's going on with me? Is it my GI hormones? I saw all different specialists, we tried to figure everything out. Nothing. We couldn't figure out what was going on. All the GI specialists just said, keep eating dairy free, gluten free, you'll be fine. And so I started doing lifestyle changes and I was always very active, so I continued my workouts, but didn't see any results. So in my head, I'm thinking, is there something wrong with me? What happened? I was supposed to get these breast implants. It was supposed to be the best thing ever, supposed to love my body. And I felt the opposite. I felt like I was always covering up myself. The breasts were really large. They started to hurt. I did have saline under the implant, and they were just never comfortable. I wasn't sure if maybe the size was just too big for my frame, but they were just very uncomfortable all the time. I couldn't lay on my stomach, couldn't lay on my sides. I would always get sharp pains, a lot of burning sensation, mainly in my left breast, around the nipple, going towards the armpit. And that's where the incisions were, through my armpits. And I've always had issues and swollen lymph nodes around the armpit. And I just blew up like a balloon. And years went on, saw all the specialists, did all the things. And I want to say about six or seven years after my implants, I came across breast implant illness. Just doing a lot of research because it came to a point where I was just so sick every day. And I was really good at hiding it because I showed my face on social media a lot. So I was really good at hiding how I felt, hiding the weight, hiding my depression, my anxiety that started to arise, just hiding all of my emotions. I would slap on a smile and show my face on social media. And so I started seeing therapists. I started seeing psychiatrists. They just wanted to put me on mood stabilizers, antidepressants, and all these different things. And so as time went on, I just told myself, this is either how I'm going to live for the rest of my life. I'm just always going to be inflamed and sick and chronic fatigue. Some days I couldn't get out of bed. I found myself calling out of my corporate job, which I'm no longer in corporate, but I was calling out of my corporate job. And then it just started to become an issue that I was missing more work than going into work. I was just so sick. I had no energy to get myself up and going every day. And when I came across, yeah, everybody should understand.

Casey's a young person.

Yes. I was in my 20s. I thought, this is supposed to be prime time. 26, right? What's going on? I.

Everybody would understand. Casey's a very young person to be describing what she's Describing, and that is very alarming. So if I was a practitioner and you came to me with that type of symptomology, which all these symptoms that she's describing are chronic inflammatory systems of every basic system in your body. And that's what ultimately this looks like. When people describe breast implant illness, how I look at it is just chronic inflammation of each of these systems that leads to what Casey's describing, and then you have a medical device in place. So it's always going to be very difficult for Casey, who's really invested in her health and has had testing and really aggressive lifestyle and diet modifications and everything to help herself, but still could not get over the hump, so to speak, with that, and then made the choice about deciding on surgery.

I did have an autoimmune disease before going into surgery. So in high school, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, but I didn't think that would have any effect on getting breast implants. I didn't think the correlation between the two. And so as I was reading more about breast implant illness, there was a time for two years that I isolated myself in my house and just did research every day because I was determined to figure out what was wrong with me. I said, I'm going to be getting married, having my dream wedding with my dream husband. Everything's falling into place. On the outside, everything looked perfect in my life, but inside I felt like I was slowly dying. And I was only 28. And I said, I still want to have a family. I have a long life to live. This is not going to be my life forever. I can't stand it. I turned to functional medicine, functional nutrition, worked with different functional medicine doctors in Massachusetts and did all the things, IV therapy, vitamin therapy, even tried different peptide therapies and just spent two years researching. My husband would call me, hey, what are you doing? I'm six hours deep on the computer because I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with me. And so then I came across breast implant illness. I started speaking with a few different other women that I just started talking about breast implant illness. And they said, I've had symptoms, too. I've had explant, Came across different women online, started talking with them, too, about their experiences with their implants and how once they removed them, they felt so much better. And I thought to myself, no way can this be my implants causing all of these things for so long. No way. So I was in a little denial for a little bit. I'm young, and I didn't want to think that these implants were making me so sick. And then we went to Spain for 17 days, and on day three, I had a rupture. I had saline implants, I had a rupture. I woke up, my left breast was flat, and I started crying and I said, maybe this is a sign that they need to come out. And I came home from the Spain trip panicked, because I didn't do any research for an explant surgeon. I didn't know about you yet. I just knew about breast implant illness, but I didn't do any consultations yet. So I panicked. I just had it replaced. And ever since that replacement surgery, my health just got worse than it was before. And I told myself this is a clear sign that it's time for them to come out. And my body is really trying to give me a sign and tell me that these implants are not good for you and they need to come out. So I felt like the rupture was really the turning point and my body just telling me that it's time for these to come out.

So then when you had that replacement, because you were already doing all this work on yourself, and when you had that rupture and then you came back from Europe and had a replacement surgery, did you have a big spike or how did you feel after that replacement?

After the replacement, I thought I was going to feel better. I don't know. In my head, I just said, I'm going to get these replaced. I'll feel fine. I had a terrible recovery. It was so bad. It was worse than the first time around. All muscle pain, a lot of nerve damage. I had no sensation in my nipples. I had numbness in my arms. And just it was a rough recovery and more inflammation. So I said, I just had surgery.

Which is uncommon because normally you just have a deflation, a replacement. That's a really straightforward thing to do if it's done in a pretty narrow time frame. So that's a really even more worrisome, you know, set of circumstances. When I hear things like that. And for the audience, when I hear people have had more than one surgery or difficulty with a side and multiple revisions or something like that, I'm always more suspicious about whether there is a contamination or some problem with biofilm or maybe there was bleeding at the time of surgery, something else is going on that's, you know, contributing to or affecting what the patient's experience is. And then clearly now that experience is multiple fold different than what you were experiencing before.

Before, yes. And I was very different than What I was experiencing before, and they looked different. They felt hard. I felt like I had more chest pain, trouble breathing, very uncomfortable. I felt like they were bigger. They were. I just a lot of discomfort in my chest and a lot of pressure and a lot of pain. And then, yeah, ever since the rupture, it really. That was my turning point. And then after that, I knew that they had to come out. And then within, I want to say, four months, I had my consultation with you, my first consultation with you, started looking at different explant surgeons. And then once I had my consult with you, I just knew right then and there, just everything was just falling into place. And I said, this is what I have to do. This is what feels right for me.

Well, I remember you're in that room that you're in right now when you spoke to me. Very case. He's very intuitive and bright and has spent a ton of time, like she said, trying to take care of herself. And she has quite the list of tests like most people don't remember.

Yeah, I sent them all to you.

But she had everything for me. And it's easier if everybody, not everybody's going to be in your position with that, you know, knowing and doing that much work, of course. So I see people with very little. And then we run our program, our strategic. Our more strategic, holistic, accelerated recovery program now just to make sure we fill in the blanks. Casey had spent all this time. And while we're on the call, I actually, I pulled back all of her tests back up. And it's a pretty impressive array of testing that she had done before she ever spoke to me, to be honest. She had basically ran my program in a slightly different way on her own and basically looked at systematically, you know, gut health and genetics and organic acid type testing and hormone testing and food sensitivities and mold. And these are the things that you have to always consider. And even with all that work, Casey still had a very high chronic inflammation test score before ever I took care of her. And there's lots of reasons for inflammation, and we've discussed them on my shows before. But in your situation, kind of knowing what the background was and obviously then trying to figure out, how can we help you with this? Because we don't want anybody to have difficult aesthetic outcomes. Obviously, that's why you're getting implants in the beginning. But most of my clients, I can't remember really what they looked like. It's a very difficult thing. They were so young like you were, and then. Well, I'LL let you pick it up and. And you can go with how we discussed it and how you arrived at what you thought would be the best situation for you. Because I don't. For everybody listening, I don't really drive narratives. And, you know, I give people my take on what's going on, and then they make an informed decision based on that themselves. I don't tell people obviously what to do. I just try to help provide the context around it. And then you arrive at the decision that fits best for you.

And that's one thing. You were never pushy about a surgery or anything like that. And I had listened to your podcast. I did a deep dive on your social media, even started following some of your clients to just follow their journey. But I knew because I had done everything. I sent you all my tests, I had done everything I could to try and figure out what was wrong. And once I finally realized that it has to be these implants, I just knew that they had to come out and I wanted the best to take them out. And I wasn't even that worried about the aesthetic. Like, oh, I'm not going to have big breasts anymore. I'm still young. I'm 30 right now. I'm not going to have these big breasts anymore. I was really working on mindset, and I kept telling myself through my journey, through meditation, through breathwork, I started doing daily breath work, daily meditation, which really helped me get super in tune with my body. And I just felt my body was really telling me it's time to get rid of them. And I'm trying to think back now. My brain just started going somewhere else. But when I first met you, I knew that I didn't care how they looked after. I just knew that in my mind, I wanted to be healthy. I wanted my body healthy, healthy. And I kept saying, I'm doing this for my body. My body's going to thank me. My body's going to be healthy after the surgery. So I didn't want to fixate on, I'm not going to have big breasts anymore. I'm not going to look a certain way. I'm not going to have the double Ds, I'm not going to have cleavage. I just really focused on my health. And I knew I spent most of my 20s so sick. Even though you're in your 20s, you're supposed to be in your prime, having fun. Now I say my 30s are going to be my prime, and I'm going to get another chance. But I wasn't really focused on the aesthetic. So I just knew that I wanted them out. My husband and I are trying to conceive. We don't have any kids yet, so the thought of doing a lift or a fat transfer just didn't make sense to me. I said I could always do a lift after. And that's what we talked about too is how I just really wanted them out. I wanted them to look decent. They didn't have to be perfect, which the outcome. They look phenomenal. And I didn't really remember what I looked like because I was in my early 20s and I didn't really remember what my chest looked like, what they felt like before implants. So then I tried to find all photos and I said if I can look like that again, that's awesome. But if not, I'm still going to learn to love my body too, no matter what.

We'll get back to the show in a moment, but I wanted to share something that I think can really help you. You might not be aware, but part of my work as an innovator in the cosmetic surgery space is to create products that will give my patients the best possible outcomes and restore their health.

As quickly as possible.

I can't tell you how critical it is for all of my patients to actively work to reduce inflammation in their bodies. We do this through diet and supplementation. In fact, I've created a special inflammation support bundle for my patients and now you can have access to it as well. One of the reasons this bundle is perfect for my patients is that so many of them have pill fatigue. It's just not going to work for them to have a handful of pills.

Each day to reduce inflammation.

So I made sure to include the liposomal version of many of the vitamins and minerals within the bundle. You'll still get the full absorption of these supplements in your mouth without having to go through your gut first in.

Order to be absorbed.

You can get the inflammation support bundle@drrobsolutions.com and begin to feel better when you make the supplements a part of your daily health routine. The website again is drrobsolutions.com I can't wait for you to get this help in your hands.

So what Casey's talking about is probably the the quiet part. No one says out loud, but I've been more and more vocal about it and your mindset, both for yourself personally and the people around you, has to be she has a great spouse. I will vouch for him. I have a ton of good significant others and spouses, which is Great, because it becomes a much easier because I would say my patients and just women in general beat on themselves a bunch about image and how it looks and what it's going to be like. And obviously I can only have so much control of this process, this, that we're trying to take care of in the operating room. But the biology of what's going on. I have a lot of tools in my programs to help with, but the psychology of what is going on, I don't till now because we're going to have Amanda Savage Brown, thankfully to start working with my patients in groups. Amanda Savage Brown wrote the book Busting Free. Casey has the book and she's a tremendous psychotherapist and has had an explant and as an author, as I mentioned, and she's going to add so much value to our program. I've tried to get her to come from Chicago and just be here in Texas with me, but she's a resolute Chicagoan. She's going to work with us nonetheless. And something since Casey's time with us is we've added health coaching now so we have more of a stronger support situation. And our new patient advocates are. Are former patients of mine. And without being my patient advocate, Casey always advocates for us with our clients. So it's a very good group. I have a great team here on my staff and then I have a great group of patients. We want to build it out and be more supportive. I will say that I'm worried about how social media portrays a lot of this and it is a viral problem for my patients who are having difficulty with mindset or. Or don't have enough support and they turn to other avenues of support. So that's why we want to work with Amanda Savage Brown. So there's more of a professional aspect to that and then have our own health coaching environment. So there's more of a professional supportive environment for that. And I feel like adding more multidisciplinary care to this problem of having explant surgery or breast implant illness or explant surgery for capture, contracture or malposition or whatever it is. It all ends up being very difficult for the patients and their loved ones as you traveled from Massachusetts to stay with us.

And it really consumes your life. It starts to just really consume your life. And you can go down the rabbit hole of going on the Facebook groups, which I don't recommend. That's one thing about my journey I noticed in the beginning when I first booked my explant with you, I started to go down the rabbit hole. Stay up all night on the Facebook groups reading comments. And I feel like that's probably the worst thing that you could do for preparing for an explant. There's a lot of good information, but there's a lot of bad information too. And a lot of people will voice how they feel based on an experience that they had with a surgeon. And so I try to tell everyone who's getting ready for explant surgery, don't spend hours on those Facebook groups, Don't spend hours going down the rabbit hole on social media. It's just you get so into yourself and into your mind. And so I just spend avoided all of them. Towards the end, leading up to my surgery, I just tried to avoid all the facebook groups and I didn't even talk about my explant before my surgery date because I didn't want the negative energy coming in from people on social media. So I'm one that will share something when it actually happens. But some women will take to social media just for support, just looking for support, like I'm having this surgery and then they're just looking for support. But when you open up that gate to social media, a lot of negative support will come into. I just told myself, setting a boundary with the social media, not gonna share it until it's done. Not gonna go down the facebook groups. I'll talk to a few women that have had successful stories with explanting. And then really my husband was a big supporter and my family was extremely supportive. And when I met my husband, I didn't have implants. So when he met me, I was wall chested. And that's how he fell in love with me. And when I got implants, he kept telling me, please don't. You don't need it. You don't need it. You're beautiful the way you are. I love you so much. And now I wish I kind of listened to him. But it's just another life lesson that now I get to share my story and hopefully help others.

I think I've had several examples in the past six months of this where the spouse was adamant not to have their wife or at that point together get implants. I get asked this all the time, but I let my wife get implants or let my daughter get implants. Well, first of all, once anybody has something in their mind that they want to do, it's going to be very difficult for you, even with my expertise, to convince anybody not to.

That was me at 23 and that's fine.

I think the point I make when I get asked because people try to pigeonhole me all the time. And I haven't put in implants in anybody for about a little over four years now, I think. And basically what I did before was take care of implant related problems. I was not somebody who did a bunch of breast augmentation because I think it's very difficult to do. And I never really was operating on the age group when you had your implants. It just. Mine was a complicated cancer background. So it was just not an easy discussion for us to have with patients. And we were doing so much other work. But the kind of. Once you get it in your head at a young age, oh, people who sell that just makes you all the more interested in getting that done. It's like at some point where you're like, I'm gonna do it anyway. I don't really. I don't care what he says.

And that was me because I knew right from middle school, once I graduate college, I'm gonna save my money and get implants. And that's what I did. So no one was telling me no.

Right. So obviously I. And people. This is very polarizing. So implants have been around for a very long period of time. Implants, knee implants, breast implants, dental implants, different types of implants to help with cardiac problems or neurologic problems. They're just part of basically taking care of patients. And some of them are life savings. This one is associated with a lot of image distortion and problems and obviously from cancer. We have a lot of experience with using breast implants, which is a whole other situation that I have a bunch of breast implant illness patients from cancer reconstruction. So it's a very. It's a complicated equation to take care of all the time. And those patients have even more issues because they, as you described when we were younger, you didn't have a lot of tissue, but somebody said a mastectomy basically has lost virtually all their tissue. They maybe have a thin layer of tissue left, but it's basically an implant or in the implant based reconstructions. So it's a complicated topic. And I give Casey tons of credit because every time I spoke to her after surgery and follow ups with her and her husband, she had just a great mindset. Because to recover, principally if you're not in the right mindset, despite how much I know or how good our programs are, how supportive my staff is, if your mind's not in the correct place, it's always going to be more difficult for you to recover?

Absolutely. I feel if you have a strong mindset going in, you're going to have a strong mindset coming out. And so I had my consultations with you in April of 2023 and I booked my surgery for November of 2023 just because we were going to be in Europe for about a month. And so that did give months to prepare for surgery. So I did a lot of mental, physical and emotional work. I physically prepared my body for a surgery, eating, anti inflammatory, staying with my lifestyle, nutrition, and then I did a lot of meditation. I did a lot of just self work, a lot of inner work, a lot of why did I get implants and now why am I taking them out? And I just kept telling my body every day because it's easy to look and wake up, look in the mirror and say pick yourself apart. I don't like this, I don't like that. Which I used to do. But then I started reading some more mindset books and listening to different podcasts and doing different meditations. Never thought I could meditate for two hours a day, but here I am now. I could meditate all day if I wanted, but it's a lot of just inner work. Waking up every day, I would look at myself in the mirror and say, explant is in X amount of days. I'm doing this for you, meaning my body. I'm doing this for my body. I'm doing this for my health. And whatever I look like after, I'm going to learn to love my new body. So really just different apps help me. I wrote some down here. The different apps that really help me with my mindset. I would do meditation and breath work on Open Calm Headspace. Even Melissa Wood, I would do pilates and she has meditation on her app too. Different books like the Healing Mindset, Joe Dispenza and doing a lot of somatic work. So Pilates, just doing body scans, a lot more walking in nature. I found to like be outside in nature and just kind of be with myself and my thoughts. It helped me to calm my nervous system to really get in tune with myself and my body. And so I did all this. I even did energy work. So I worked with an energy healer doing Reiki and theta healing. So we really just prep myself for the surgery. I tried, like I said, staying away from the Facebook groups. So I just did a lot of inner work and just a lot of self work. And then the day of surgery I did grounding outside. 5:00am I was outside in the backyard where I Was staying, doing grounding. I set a meditation. On the drive to surgery. I did a meditation and I was your first patient of the day. And when I went in, they said very calm. I said, I am very calm. I said, I don't have one ounce of anxiety. And all my other surgeries, I would go in full blown anxiety, sweating, sometimes crying, just not in a good headspace at all. But this surgery, I walked in with a big smile and I felt so at ease. And I said, I'm going into the surgery and I'm going to come out a new woman. My body's going to thank me and everything is just, we're going to continue the healing journey. So I was very calm going into surgery. Even the nurses after said I looked very peaceful. I was smiling, coming out of anesthesia, which never happens. Usually I'm crying my eyes out. And then after that, I was just very kind to myself. I talked to my breasts every single day, which might sound silly, but I would just hold them while I was massaging, doing my massages. I would just talk to my breasts, talk to my body and just say positive and kind words to myself instead of being negative. That I like how they looked right away after I saw them. After two weeks, they looked a little sad. I'm not going to lie. It was a big change from having these big implants, big cleavage, to looking a little deflated. But every day I worked on myself, I kept up with my apps, I kept up with books, I kept even talking to my husband about it. And, and I would apologize and say, I know we just talked about this yesterday, but really talking it out helps me. And he says, it's okay, we can talk about it every day, whatever makes you feel best. My friends, my family, just talking with them and their support, they told me how amazing I look, how I look better without implants than when I did with implants. And so having the support from friends, family and a supportive spouse really helps. But just it's mindset, mindset, mindset, because you can come out of surgery and you can just pick yourself apart. I hate how my breasts look. I'm never going to be happy. I'm never going to look how I did. That's easy. And then you're going to have a negative energy, negative mindset. So I think reinforcing positive modalities like meditation, breath work, just going for a walk by yourself in nature, just doing different things that will make you happy. Dancing around. I noticed that I play music now and just dance around my house and look at myself in the mirror. And I'm just happy. I overall, I just feel happier. And I do feel like I got my quality of life back. So that's why I keep telling myself, too.

So when I I met Casey that morning for surgeries, I've been operating since 1996, and invariably, you know, people see me and in the morning and they are normally nervous, which is a pretty common thing. Casey was not nervous. And people routinely ask how. I am just Nina, I'm not the problem for surgery. I'm always good. But taking care of someone in the right frame of mind is much easier. We do a lot on the front end to help with that, to calm down the nervous system. But what Casey's describing with energy therapy and Reiki and meditation and grounding or something like jigong, those are all very important practices to reduce tension, put you in a parasympathetic state and really help you. It becomes a much easier process for us to take care of someone who was in Casey's mindset both before, during, and after surgery and then when she's done. And we have a really good program so our patients really don't wake up having a lot of discomfort or anything. So it's more like now you can get on with the day and it's done and go about your practices. But I think what you mentioned is important. You got to begin those practices somehow, some way, some shape or form. And I'm glad you shared all those again and maybe just one more time, your favorite ones for mindset, if you would share them again so everybody can catch them.

Yep. So the apps that I really love, just because I was so new to meditation, I didn't know where to start. So I like to guided medicine, meditation and the app, open the app Calm and Headspace. Those have some great guided meditations to really introduce you to meditation, breath work and different mindset. Even some of the books that I read were it's Healing Mindset. And then now I'm going to read Busting Free by Amanda and some Joe Dispenza. Meditations really put me into a good headspace. But it's just starting and I never knew where to start and so I just started Googling and then I found these apps and I started doing them every day and then I made it part of my daily routine, my daily ritual. And it just really helped me to prepare for surgery and after surgery, too. I still continued them. I still continued the lifestyle, the healthy nutrition, still continued all my mindset. Things that I do still continue with My energy work. And it just really helps because seeing even my husband said from this surgery, the explant surgery, compared to all my other surgeries, I've had rhinoplasty, I've had my appendix out, and I've had two breast augmentations for implants in. He said this was the best that I've ever prepared myself for surgery and come out of surgery. He said, this is the best. And even people on. People I don't even know on social media, they notice a difference in my energy and everything.

Yeah. I think, first of all, Casey's a real bright spot in my practice for how she was prepared for surgery, because we want everybody to have the best possible situation before surgery. I think most people don't understand why I run a program the way I run the Strategic Holistic Accelerated Recovery Program is meant to prep you for surgery so that when you show up. From our perspective, we've done a lot. Your perspective as the client is you have to have your mindset in the proper place. You need your support system, your social support system needs to be in the proper place. And we have more options now than we had at your surgical time. But you had a great support system. And I think things go completely unspooled when somebody doesn't have those other elements involved. They're not taking care of themselves, either from a holistic standpoint or a mindset standpoint standpoint. And then they have very poor social support system that just makes it that much more complicated. And they come in really upset state. And when you're like that, I mean, it's a really complicated equation. It's already complicated, but that becomes exponentially more complicated because then like you said at your other surgeries, you were just unwound. I mean, things were just overwhelming, basically. That's. I. We're trying to get out of that completely to the best of our ability, so. Well, I hope everybody's enjoyed listening to Casey. She's wonderful. And I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story with us.

Thank you so much. I had a great time sharing my story, and I'm going to continue sharing my journey on social media. And I enjoy connecting with all different women.

Okay, Tell them where to follow you so they can follow you.

Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram. And my Instagram name is Casey Araujo, so it's C, A, S, E, Y dot, A, R, A, U, J, O. You can follow me on Instagram. I share a lot of lifestyle and wellness on there, and I'm sharing my whole explant journey, sharing my test talk about how I feel, sharing how I look so you can follow me there. And if anyone that's listening is having a surgery coming up, my messages are always open and I always try to respond to as many people as I can. And if you're feeling a little nervous, you can message me.

Thank you so much for that, Casey.

All right, thank you.

Thanks for joining me today. I hope you found the information and stories shared on this one podcast helpful and informative. Remember, taking control of your health and wellness is key to recovery from breast implant illness. If you're looking for additional resources and support, be sure to visit our online store, Dr. Rob's Solutions. At DrRobSolutions myshopify.com you'll find a wide range of wellness products and supplements to support your journey to recovery. From specially formulated detox supplements to personalized skincare products, we have everything you need to aid your recovery.

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Take care. Of sam.