After weeks of unbearable pain, her nipples had to be removed - leaving
her self-conscious and her relationship with her boyfriend at breaking
point'The surgeon made me feel very comfortable,' says Ms Damiani who
had hoped to have her differently sized breasts evened up.'He said the
outcome was going to be fantastic and I had no reason to think
otherwise. You go into it a bit blind.
'You have this sort of rosy outlook that everything is going to be fine.
You hear things occasionally but you never think it's going to be you
or your family and friends. That's just the risk you take.'
Initially everything seemed fine and Ms Damiani was told her breasts
were healing normally. But suspecting something was wrong after the pain
worsened, she insisted on a second opinion.
'I saw a second nurse and that's the first time I was advised that
something was seriously wrong,' she says.In fact, things were more than
seriously wrong - they were dangerously so. Ms Damiani had developed
necrosis.
Usually caused by severe trauma to cells, necrosis causes tissue cells
to die and results in parts of the body quite literally rotting away.
In Ms Damiani's case, it was her nipples that had succumbed and before long, she found herself back in hospital.
'I'd never heard of necrosis before,' she says. 'I was very
scared.'Shockingly, the surgeon who bungled the operation proved less
than sympathetic.
'He said: "Oh this happens but it has not happened to me in a long
time",' remembers Ms Damiani.Despite the surgeon's ministrations, in the
end he was forced to cut away all of the infected parts of Ms Damiani's
breasts.
'Basically, what he did was remove the whole areola and nipple so I was left with just raw skin on my left breast,' she says.
I realised that my breasts would never be the same again and I wasn't going to have the outcome I had hoped for.'
Left with no nipples and uneven breasts, Ms Damiani became depressed and
was left so self-conscious, she couldn't even bear to be touched by her
boyfriend Wesley.
'I was in a really bad way,' she remembers. 'Everything seemed to be
going really badly. I suffered from depression for a while. I still am.
I'm still on antidepressants.
'I didn't want to do anything with Mum. I didn't want to go out. I
didn't want to meet friends. Sex was non existent for about six months
and it's still suffering now.
'A year and a half down the line, I still feel really ugly. We were
literally on the verge of breaking up. It was really hard.'But despite
her past experience and fear of going under the knife, Ms Damiani has
finally taken action to fix her ruined breasts and has had another
operation, this time with surgeon Paul Harris, to mend the damage.
Two operations, one of them nipple reconstruction, later and she says she is finally learning to enjoy life again.
Culled from Mailonline
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