Tarnya Walker had a nightmarish experience with PIP breast implants. Picture: Supplied Source: news.com.au
- Woman tells of "nightmare" experience with breast implants
- Earlier: News.com.au revealed soaring rate of implant ruptures
- Share your story with this reporter: @drpiotrowski
SIX years ago, after a medical condition left her breasts disfigured, mum-of-two Tarnya Walker decided to get breast implants.
But there's no way Walker could have predicted how they would change her life – for the worse.
"I went from running my own business and being financially secure to being pretty much homeless … and just screwed," the mum-of-two said. "It was definitely a nightmare."
"When you don't have your health, what do you have?"
Like at least 6000 Australian women, Walker had implants produced by French manufacturer PIP. The company's implants produced between 1998 and 2010 were recalled and the French government recommended women get them surgically taken out.
News.com.au revealed last week that the rate of PIP implants rupturing in Australian women has soared this year to more than 400 cases, according to official statistics.
Walker is one of them. She found out her implants had ruptured in February.
Life hasn't been the same since.
The human toll
So many aspects of Walker's life have been affected by the dodgy breast implants.
The 41-year-old dog groomer hasn't been able to work since February because of the rupturing, so she's been on a single pension.
Her budget is stretched. She says she can "barely put food on the table".
Finding a place to rent is hard because she's now unemployed, and she reckons she's going to have to move from where she lives now to somewhere she doesn't think is as safe.
"I've worked hard all my life to go back to the place I don't feel safe in," she explained to News.com.au.
And then there's her children. A mother of a 17-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl, Tarnya says: "My kids' lives have changed. They don't have their normal mum."
"My daughter said to me: 'I can't wait 'til you feel better again.' "
Her breast implant saga did not come at a good time. Just last year she was rushed to hospital when her gall bladder exploded.
Path forward
Walker has joined her voice to urgent calls for a national register of breast implants and medical devices to be set up.
"What's important to me is that we don't make it about breast implants but about the process that broke down," she says.
Critics accused medicines watchdog, the TGA, of playing down the danger PIP implants posed to Australian women earlier this year, because it had no statistical evidence of widespread ruptures.
In January, the TGA said they had received only 37 indications of rupture and this was "well within the expected rupture rate for silicone breast implants".
Public Health Association president Michael Moore said: "They didn't have a system, a methodical system, for recording the number of implants. Therefore the conclusion was there was no danger."
"The real issue at the time was there was no national register," he said.
The Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons currently has an opt-out register, not an opt-in one.
While she's scared there might be future complications, Walker says she's feeling better now. She has since got her implants removed.
And replaced, out of her own pocket.
"[Women with breast implants] just want what we had," she said.
"It's probably a bit crude. But if you woke up tomorrow and half your penis was missing would you still feel like you?"
Share your story with this reporter at Daniel.Piotrowski@news.com.au. Daniel's on Twitter here.
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