Robert Whitfield MDAmerica's Breast Implant Illness Expert™

Navigating the Emotional Journey of Breast Implant Removal

20 Mar 2025 · 0 min

Watch on YouTube

0:26

A short conversational interview (YouTube video) led by Robert Whitfield MD about the emotional and physical experience of breast implant removal. The speakers describe the immediate post-operative sensations (anesthesia, pain pills), the surprising mental impact of losing large implants (described bluntly as a 'mind fuck'), and clinician approaches to aftercare—listening, empathizing, and reassuring that outcomes often improve since these patients did not undergo mastectomy. One speaker notes a firm personal preference not to have implants reinserted despite size change from double D to C.

One thing that I think is important to talk about is it is a mind fuck, at least for me, to have double D boobs. And then you go under the knife and then you have seize. When you get out, it's a little bit. And then you're also on anesthesia.
Some would maybe not even have that.
Well, you're on the pain pills. It's just a lot at once.
Oh, it is.
How do you deal with sort of guiding people through the aftercare?
It's the hardest thing ever. Yeah, I listen, you know, I try to be empathetic and understanding as possible, but I know it's going to get better because you didn't have a mastectomy. So I know that's basically the worst possible situation for me to deal with. And I dealt with that all the time doing oncology reconstruction. It is from a mental perspective, like you said, and you've told me this. It's mind fuck. It's very hard from an image perspective right off the bat.
But here's the weird thing, and I mean this wholeheartedly. If you had paid me $100 million, I still would not put those implants back in. Like, that's. That's the mind fuck of it, is that I was like, ew, get these implants away from me. I don't want them. And when they were out and you go from a double D to a C, and it's weird, I still don't want them back in.