A woman has gone viral on social media after revealing the struggle she had with her breast implants until she removed them and discovered that one of them was infested with mold.

Melissa Lima, who goes by the handle @melissalima713 on TikTok, explained that she got breast implants in 2002 because "being in front of the camera made [her] insecure about [her] body".

She went on to disclose how, eight years later, she began to feel intense pain in her body and didn’t know what the cause of it was, despite speaking to "hundreds" of medical specialists.

"In 2010, I started becoming sick with severe joint pain, depression, and unexplained inflammation," Melissa wrote in the overlay text of the video, as she showed pictures and clips of her swollen face. "After [hundreds] of doctors and still no answer, I just gave up."

Watch Melissa's TikTok below:

The TikToker then described how the discomfort impacted her daily life, writing: "As a single mom, I couldn’t get out of bed to cook for my boys and would often would if they would be better off [without] me."

She showed photos of her swollen legs, feet, and buttocks, and wrote that a "good friend" of hers encouraged her to research breast implant illness.

After her research, the mother-of-two said that "in October 2020, I made a decision that literally changed my life," as she decided to get her breast implants removed.

Melissa then shared a video of a hand holding a breast implant that she says was filled with "mold" and was removed during her surgery. She then posted a side-by-side photo of the two saline implants, with one mildewed while the other implant was still clear.

The rejoiced woman then documented how her body changed immediately after taking out the implants, explaining: "My face and eyes literally changed within hours. I finally felt like me again!"

She then concluded in her video by writing in her clip that now she's living her "best life" and said she's grateful that her sons have "their mom back".

Last month, Melissa spoke with BuzzFeed about her experience after her video garnered 5.3 million views on the social media platform.

The mother described some of her initial symptoms in 2010, including brain fog, fatigue, and intestinal issues, and revealed that after medics performed multiple blood tests, they discovered that her symptoms were from having Hashimoto’s disease.

According to Mayo Clinic, Hashimoto’s disease is "an autoimmune disorder affecting the thyroid gland," explaining that the "immune-system cells lead to the death of the thyroid's hormone-producing cells".

Melissa highlighted that after doing her reading about breast implant illness, she knew that she wanted to remove the implants, even if she wasn’t sure that it would relieve her pain.

"I didn’t know if removing them was going to 'cure' my problems. However, I was so sick, I decided I was going to get them taken out either way," she explained.

Furthermore, the TikToker told the outlet that after her surgery, her doctor said that he was stunned and told Melissa that he’d "never seen" mold inside of an implant before.

Now that it's been two years since her surgery, Melissa expressed that she is "back to [her] normal self," even though she still has to take medication for Hashimoto's disease and has "joint pain" in her hips.

"Other than that, I’m happy, healthy, and more importantly, extremely lucky to be able to get back to my normal self," she added.

Featured image credit: Taras Grebinets / Alamy

A woman who underwent surgery on her bottom says she was left in agony and with a deformed behind after the implants rotated inside of her, the Daily Mail reports.

Jabrena, from Georgia, decided to have implants inserted in the region in order to transform her 'beanpole' physique into the more curvaceous figure she had always coveted. But she was far from pleased with the results.

Take a sneak peek of Jabrena's appearance on E!'s Botched:

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Jabrena was left with two sizable and artificial-looking implants which made an obvious outline underneath her skin.

Two weeks after the surgery, the swelling had gone down somewhat, and the implant could be seen on the side as though there were a "crease" in her flesh. A month and a half later, though, the implant flipped.

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Jabrena told surgeons in a new episode of the E! TV show, Botched, that the implants were so poorly fitted that they somehow managed to rotate inside her body, to the point where they were causing her pain.

Fortunately, the show's surgeons were able to repair the damage and give the patient the bum she had asked for.

The Botched surgeons, Dr Terry Dubrow and Dr Paul Nassif, said the implants had been placed in a pocket (the space surgeons created inside the patient's flesh) which was too large.

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That is why the implants failed to stay in place and moved around inside her body. Jabrena's original surgeon offered to try to fix the error for an additional $4,000 but she decided to seek a second opinion from the Botched surgeons instead.

"I just want a little, cute, nice toot butt and not this big honk that I have back here,' she said on the show.

Dr Dubrow described the ordeal as a 'butt dilemma' and said: "We certainly want to help you, but we don't want to restore you to a place that you hate."

This woman was left with a botched face after trying to fix her 'pelican neck':

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He added: "Not only are the implants in a pocket that's way too big, but they're in the wrong plane in the pocket, allowing them to flip around too easily. The problem is, if I just take the implants out, she'll have so much sagging skin and no projection that I'll be trading one big problem for another even bigger problem."

Dr Dubrow removed the implants and fluid from Jabrena's buttocks and replaced them with those of a smaller, more flattering shape.

"Before my surgery, I had a saggy butt and implants were flipping," Jabrena said. "But now, thanks to Dr Dubrow, I am finally free of my honk butt and now I finally have that cute toot butt that I've always wanted."

A mom-of-four has spoken out about being "slowly poisoned" by her DD breast implants, which she claims caused such severe memory loss that she feared she was developing dementia.

Rachel Misztal-Bazzell of New York was just 21 when she decided to go under the knife and enhance her bust back in 2004 - originally opting for saline implants to increase her chest from a B cup to a C.

"I wasn’t insecure about my chest – it was more that I was just attracted to the look. I wanted big boobs, it was as simple as that," she said, spending $5,000 (£3,994) on the procedure.

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Admittedly a fan of more curvaceous bodies, the massage therapist then had her implants replaced and increased to a DD cup in 2013, after breastfeeding left her with unsightly skin dimpling.

This time, however, Rachel opted to have silicone implants, forking out another $7,500 (£5,991) for the larger bust.

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Fast-forward two years to 2015, and Rachel - who lives with her four children and husband, Bill, 39 - started breaking out in rashes. This was the start of a long and bizarre list of health implications.

As time went on, Rachel suffered from hair loss, bloating, anxiety, depression, fatigue, a near-constant ringing in her ears, itchy eyes, swelling all over her body, congestion, and brain fog - all of which she later attributed to breast implant illness (BII).

"I initially put it down to age and the stress of being a mom. But no matter what I tried, the symptoms just got worse and worse," she said, adding:

"I went to lots of doctors, both general medicine and specialists, and they really wanted to help, but just didn’t know how.

"They gave me things to treat each individual symptom, but nobody could explain why they had all suddenly started in the first place."

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Being unable to remember simple things, Rachel genuinely feared she had early-onset dementia, saying: "I would forget entire conversations and was constantly missing appointments. Even writing notes to myself as reminders didn’t help. It was like being in a constant out-of-body experience.

"It got to the point where I was constantly apologizing to everyone in my life for missing meetings or forgetting things they had told me. It was terrifying. I even feared it was early-onset dementia."

After doctors were left baffled by symptoms, Rachel searched the internet for answers - eventually coming across a Facebook page about BII. After reading about the condition, she became convinced that she had it.

She said: "I went online and found a Facebook group. Reading the hundreds of stories from other women, I immediately related to them.

"I believe without a shadow of a doubt I also had BII and that it was the implants causing my symptoms. By that point, I absolutely hated them and just wanted them gone."

Despite many women claiming to suffer from BII, no official test yet exists for the condition.

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In fact, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) says it is not a medical diagnosis, but a term coined by women who believe they have developed symptoms including joint ache, sleep disturbance, headaches, chills, and neurological issues as a result of implants.

However, BAAPS acknowledges that one BII Facebook group with more than 50,000 members all reporting similar stories is not a coincidence, and now studies into BII are underway in Australia and the USA.

Certain that her breast implants were the cause of her symptoms, Rachel opted to have them removed in June 2019.

Since then, she has recovered so well that she no longer takes any of the medication she needed when she felt at her worst.

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She said: "For sure, there have been times when I have questioned if this has all been in my head and some people have told me they don’t believe BII is real.

"But they have all changed their minds after seeing the difference in me since I had my silicone implants removed. It was like suddenly waking up from a coma."

She continued: "I no longer bloat, my hair is thick again, my eyes are whiter, my skin is clear, I have more energy – the list goes on. I used to take loads of medication to combat all the symptoms, which I no longer need."

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Speaking about the process of finding a surgeon willing to remove her implants, Rachel said:

"I am not accusing surgeons of having done anything wrong, or asking anybody to take responsibility for what has happened to me, as not everybody with implants has issues.

"But finding a surgeon who believed women when they said they had BII was very important to me.

"It’s still quite contested in the medical profession, but both the surgeon who took my implants out and my GP have been so supportive.

"They’ve agreed that it makes a lot of sense. At the end of the day, my implants were a foreign body that my own body was trying to get rid of, but instead, it ended up attacking itself.

"My surgeon told me he had seen BII before and knew it was very possible and plausible. My GP has even asked if she can tell my story to other patients who have implants to help raise awareness."

In June of 2019, Rachel paid a further $6,000 (£4,794) to have her implants removed and, despite suffering a lot of pain at first, she says that right away she could tell her operation had been successful, as her eyes immediately seemed far brighter.

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Within five days, her brain fog began to lift and she felt much more "alive" and energized.

In the year since having surgery, she has gone from strength to strength and now no longer requires any of her old medication.

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Rachel now wants to raise awareness of BII – which several celebrities, such as Chrissy Teigen - have shared their own experiences of. She said: "It’s very clear to me that my implants were what was making me sick.

"I’d encourage other women who have bizarre symptoms and are struggling to connect the dots to look into BII. It’s been a long, painful road, but I am finally back to the old me."

In a shocking medical mishap, a Washington woman woke up from surgery to find that her body had been altered in a way she wasn't expecting.

Kimberly McCormick, 65, experienced every patient's worst nightmare. After undergoing what she believed would be a routine breast lift and skin removal in Mexico, she woke up with a breast augmentation and a Brazilian butt lift - procedures she insists she never requested.

McCormick had originally traveled to Mexico in an effort to undergo minor cosmetic adjustments after losing 15olbs.

She says she had requested a skin removal and a breast lift - two significantly different procedures from what she received.

A breast lift, Kimberly's original request, is significantly different from a breast augmentation. The former repositions existing tissue, while the latter increases breast size, which is what Kimberly unexpectedly received. She was also aghast to learn she had undergone a Brazilian butt lift, a procedure involving the transfer of fat to the buttocks to enhance their size and shape.

Speaking to NewsNation, the mom revealed she didn't know anything was wrong until she came to after her surgery, saying: "When I woke up my chest was really sore, and I just started bawling."

Post-operation, she was allegedly told by the surgery staff that she had requested to have a full C set of breast implants - but she argues that this is something she "would never say, not ever".

"The leg lift, the arm lift, the breast lift, and the tummy tuck, everything was marked out and ready to go," she told the outlet. "I went into surgery at four o'clock in the afternoon. And apparently I didn't come out of surgery until 1:30 in the morning."

"At 3:30 in the morning I called my daughter bawling... because I woke up with huge breasts which, if I live to be 500 I never would have wanted," she added. "It wasn't supposed to happen, it just wasn't."

The mom says she will have to undergo more surgery as the implants are "too big". Credit: Fox13

This wasn't Kimberly's first stay at the medical facility in Tijuana. Six years prior, she had undergone successful weight loss surgery - which is what led to her returning for further procedures. She told NewsNation that, six years ago, she had a great experience in the affordable and clean facility.

However, this time, she says her room was "filthy" and that she suffered a "partially collapsed lung", as well as an infection.

An emotional Kimberly then Fox13: "The care was horrible. I've been disfigured and now I'm going to have to go under more surgery"

She also claims that she didn't see her surgeon for a further three days after the surgery, and was described as "sexy" by her cordinator. "'Sexy' wasn't my goal," she told NewsNation, "My goal was to remove 90 inches of excess skin."

Kimberly had opted to travel to Mexico for the procedures due to the fact it was around half as much ($30,000) as it would have cost in the US. However, she has now been told that it will cost approximately $75,000 to reverse what the surgeons did to her in Mexico.

To make matters even worse, Kimberly's daughter, Misty Ann, alleges that she was physically pushed away by security when she attempted to find out what had happened to her mother.

Misty says she asked staff: "What happened to my mother?"

"I get to the door, and he pushes me hard and there is this cement ramp and I just go flying," the daughter continued.

Her mom then added: "I was just afraid I was going to die right there, and she wouldn’t have known."

Kimberly now wants to warn others against traveling to another country in order to undergo low-cost medical procedures. "I don't care how enticing they make the offer, don't do it," she said. "Because the end result is not going to be something you are happy with."

We wish Kimberly the very best with her recovery journey.

Featured image credit: Fox13

More and more in modern society, it's becoming a common practice for both men and women to undergo extensive cosmetic surgery in order to alter their appearance. Although the overall number of plastic surgeries in the United Kingdom dropped by 40 percent in 2016, last year was the first dip in a decade of steady growth in the industry, and whether it's a tummy tuck, botox or even a penis enlargement, people are altering their bodies in order to achieve perceived aesthetic perfection. Some are spending more money than others, however, and there are those who have transformed themselves entirely in the pursuit of their personal desires. Meet Cindy Moore from Salford, Greater Manchester. Mother to two children, she's spent around £10,000 on a year-long plastic surgery session, striving to turn herself into a "real-life sex doll". Cindy has her lips filled every three months, and has also undergone a boob job and hair extensions in pursuit of her aesthetic goal, but she says there's still work to be done in order to look like a human sex doll, noting that it's a "full-time job looking like this".

"I want another boob job and probably a tummy tuck. I'm lucky because of my skin I don't really need Botox. I used to be around a size A, but now my boobs are double F's. I've still got a long way to go. I'm trying to lose more weight and look even more like a sex doll. I've just always liked it when I saw the look on other people. I think it makes me look beautiful."

Cindy has been sporting the "fake" look since the age of 19, when she started to bleach her hair and wear some pretty glamorous makeup. Now 31 years old, Cindy was inspired to take her look to the next level when her fiancé, father to her two children, was uncovered as a cheater. After giving birth to eight-year-old Max and six-year-old Lacey, she had gained seven stone, but the split forced Cindy to take a fresh look at life, and she went about transforming her body. She began training seven days a week and went on a strict diet, dropping down from a size 24 to a size 12, but Cindy still wasn't satisfied with how she looked. "When we split last year I looked at myself in the mirror and just thought ‘this needs to go’, so I trained hard and cut the carbs and lost it really rapidly. I’ve always liked the bimbo blow-up doll look, ever since I was younger so I just started taking it to the next level. Since I split up with him I’ve felt good about myself overall because I had my boobs done and lost a lot of weight." She spent thousands of pounds to go for the blow-up doll look, but it wasn't until she went on the Channel 5 Show, 100% Hotter, that she realised that it was the right aesthetic for her. "When I did the show, I already had on the bimbo doll look, but was no where near as extreme as I am now. I think the point of the TV show was to show me that I looked better with a natural look, but it just had the opposite effect really. All I could think was 'I’ve got a long way to go'." In order to pay for her plastic surgery maintenance, Cindy sells provocative photos of herself online to around 100 followers at £25 a month, and while she admits that some of the attention she gets isn't ideal, saying: "sometimes it’s like people don’t realise I’m actually a person and not really a sex doll", she's more than happy with her transformation.