All I wanted growing up was to fit in.
I was the only Iranian girl in a Bible Belt town where judgment came before introductions. In third grade, I proudly presented Iran to my class: Persian rugs, gold jewelry with my name written in Farsi, and kabobs my mom helped me cook. No one touched the food. Not even the teacher. Faces curled in disgust at the project and at me.
That was the day I understood I was different. At eight years old, I began hating everything about myself because everyone else seemed to.
Our house was vandalized. My car was graffitied with racial slurs. Once, someone shot out my back windshield because of my skin. Teachers pretended not to notice words scratched across my photo on school bulletin boards. Everyone knew who did it. No one stopped it.
So I tried to become less visible.
I sprayed lemon juice on my hair and skin, hoping to lighten both. It did not work. It left my skin red and splotchy and turned my black hair into a brassy, matted mess. At nineteen, I had a rhinoplasty to narrow what kids constantly mocked: “You have a huge nose.”
I did not want to be beautiful. I wanted to be ignored.
I will never forget the surgeon removing the cast from my nose. I sobbed tears of joy. I felt like I had wiped my Iranian nose off my face.
I still did not fit in. My last name was a dead giveaway.
At twenty, I got breast implants.
I went from an A cup to a DD, convinced bigger breasts would make me safer, more accepted, more desirable, and less foreign. During my consultation, the cosmetic surgeon mostly discussed sizing. I do not remember a serious conversation about long-term risks. The paperwork mentioned anesthesia complications. I signed it without hesitation.
If I am honest, I did not want to hear about risks. I wanted transformation.
For a while, the implants worked.
Bartenders remembered my drink. I got free shots at terrible college bars. Women complimented my chest in bikinis. I mistook attention for acceptance. I mistook being desired for being safe.
But they did not fix the deeper problem. I still did not feel at home in my own body.
Four years without answers
Sixteen years later, at thirty-six, my body began failing in ways no doctor could or would explain.
Between 2016 and 2020, I saw more specialists than I can count: gynecologists, gastroenterologists, ENTs, and hormone doctors. I gained weight despite eating clean and exercising intensely. My abdomen swelled painfully and stayed that way for years. My periods became so heavy that I kept extra pants in my car and in my classroom. I was a teacher at the time, and you cannot simply leave thirty teenagers unattended when you are bleeding through your clothes.
I planned my life around bathrooms and dark pants.
My hair fell out until I developed bald spots. Brain fog erased conversations mid-sentence. I bruised easily. I was exhausted all the time. My joints hurt. My right breast felt tight and uncomfortable.
I could only schedule appointments during school breaks. Summer became my medical season. I spent those months sitting in waiting rooms instead of resting.
Financially, I could only pursue additional testing because my husband earned more than I did. Even then, we spent over $30,000 searching for answers.
One doctor dismissed me outright. One handed me Ambien and said, “You are a skinny white woman. There is nothing wrong with you.” I wanted to scream. Instead, I nodded and left with a sleep aid.
Another treated me like a drug seeker when I asked for pain relief. I was told to take Advil, to try birth control, and to try antidepressants. One suggested physical therapy “for my uterus.”
I stopped feeling like a patient. I felt like a nuisance.
An OB-GYN charged $8,000 for exploratory surgery for suspected endometriosis. I convinced myself this would finally solve it. When I woke up, still groggy from anesthesia, he said he had found minor lesions and removed them.
I cried with relief.
Then he and several nurses stood around my hospital bed asking where my bruises came from, over and over. I insisted my husband had not hurt me. Finally, the surgeon muttered, “I guess it could be leukemia.”
The surgery fixed nothing.
When I was fully coherent, I realized something terrifying. I had told him during my very first visit that I was bruising for no reason. He had ignored it. He did not remember.
Even more symptoms piled up. It became hard to speak, which was my job. My voice grew hoarse. It felt like a lump sat permanently in my throat. One doctor told me she did not want to alarm me, but it could be multiple sclerosis. I left with an order for a brain scan and a new layer of fear. I called the imaging center between class periods, panicking.
I became convinced I was dying.
I lost trust in medicine.
At one point, I told my husband I wanted to see Europe at least once before I died. It did not feel dramatic. It felt practical.
So we went to Italy.
I loved every second of that trip, even in misery. I walked cobblestone streets in pain. I smiled in photos while my abdomen throbbed. I ate pasta slowly, drank wine in Italian villages, and tried to forget my reality. My hair looked greasy and thin in every picture. I was afraid to wash it. The sight of hair collecting in the drain was too devastating.
On the flight home, after a long delay, boarding was finally called. We stood up and I saw blood soaked into the café seat where I had been sitting. My leggings were dark, but the chair was light. The stain was undeniable.
I ran through the airport in blood-soaked leggings, locked myself in a fluorescent bathroom stall, changed into a dry pair from my carry-on, shoved the ruined ones into a plastic bag, and boarded the plane in excruciating pain.
During that trip, I took so much Advil that I later developed a stomach bleed. I bought a TENS machine to cope with the pain. I wore it under my clothes at work. It did not fix anything.
When I look at those photos now, I feel sadness and rage. I was not dramatic. I was not anxious. I did not just feel sick. I looked visibly unwell.
Finding other women with the same symptoms
Desperate, I turned to the internet.
I remembered a childhood friend whose mother had become very sick and sued over her breast implants. Hers were silicone. Mine were saline. I assumed that meant I was safe.
I was not.
Saline implants still have a silicone outer shell. I had never considered what they were made of or what my body might be reacting to.
Eventually, I found a private online group. Thousands of women. Before-and-after photos. Stories that read like my medical chart: hair loss, brain fog, chronic inflammation, autoimmune symptoms.
They all used the same phrase: breast implant illness.
Many of them said they improved after removing their implants and the scar capsules that form around them.
I had no idea the body forms a scar capsule around an implant to wall off a foreign object.
The idea terrified me.
I was scared of how I would look without implants. I was scared of sagging skin. I was scared nothing would change.
At some point, I had to decide who I believed.
The doctors who dismissed me.
Or my own body.
I chose me.
I had my implants and the surrounding scar capsules removed. My right breast had developed capsular contracture, making it hard and misshapen. My surgeon recommended a lift during the explant surgery. I agreed.
The night before surgery, I stood in front of the mirror and stared at the body I had paid for twice, once with money and once with my health.
After explant surgery
When I woke up after surgery, I felt something I had not felt in years: relief. I could immediately breathe easier. I literally had 1.6 pounds removed from my chest.
Within weeks, the bloating began to disappear. The bleeding stopped. The pain eased. My hair stopped falling out. My energy returned. The symptoms I had been told were “nothing” were suddenly gone.
No doctor called to apologize. No one admitted they had missed it.
The only thing that changed was me.
What remains is the psychological damage of being dismissed for years: the gaslighting, the way I learned to question myself before questioning authority, and the way I shrank in exam rooms apologizing for taking up time.
I altered my body at twenty to feel accepted.
I removed the implants at forty to survive.
My implants now sit in a cabinet in my laundry room, a reminder of what I endured and what I overcame. Insurance denied coverage for the explant surgery. I paid out of pocket. I kept the implants in case there is ever a lawsuit.
The price I paid for beauty was not worth what it cost me.
And I will never again ignore what my body is trying to tell me.
Related reading
For practical support after a dismissive appointment, read how to respond to medical gaslighting when you feel dismissed.
Read more of Erica’s writing on Messy Diaries on Substack.
