A woman born with a rare condition which means she only has "one breast" turned down a free NHS boob job and is now a model.
Rebecca Butcher, 26, was offered the chance to have a breast implant when she was just 16 - so both her breasts could be the same size.
She turned down the surgery and instead choses to celebrate her difference.
Rebecca Butcher, 26, was offered the chance to have a breast implant when she was just 16 - so both her breasts could be the same size.
She turned down the surgery and instead choses to celebrate her difference.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00 Look, as someone with one boob, I'm constantly being told to just get a boob job. Just do
00:06 this. Just do that. And the word "just" makes it sound so easy. I think a lot of people
00:12 aren't aware of the risks of surgery, especially on your chest, where your heart and your lungs
00:17 are. And a boob job isn't the only option when it comes to dealing with something like
00:22 this. You could have a boob job, which would be an implant. You could also have a reduction.
00:27 You could also have the muscle from the back taken to the front if you have the condition
00:31 that I have, which is called Poland Syndrome, which means the muscle on this side of my
00:34 chest is deformed. There is also an option to put what people describe as kind of like
00:40 an airbag under here, and it gets filled up over time to stretch the skin. So there isn't
00:45 just boob jobs. But all of these options come with their own risks. Any surgery does. So
00:52 the risks of a breast implant is something called breast implant illness, where the body
00:57 can reject this foreign object being inside your body and make you very sick. And because
01:01 of the chest muscle deformity that I have, I've spoken to women that had an implant put
01:05 on top of that muscle, and it would not sit properly on top of where it was supposed to
01:09 be, and it flipped and ruptured and had to be removed. And some implants only have a
01:14 certain lifespan, so you have to have them changed every so many years. So if you commit
01:19 to having an implant today, you might have to have it changed in ten years, and another
01:24 ten years, and another ten years, and that is so many surgeries for the rest of your
01:27 life that you have to recover from and commit to. And if I had an implant on this side,
01:32 I would also have to have an implant on the bigger side as well to make sure that they
01:35 are the same size and shape. I think the option with less risks would be to have the larger
01:40 side removed to make it smaller so that it's the same size as this one. But that isn't
01:45 completely riskless either. With any surgery, you have a chance of infection, you have a
01:49 chance that your body won't be able to recover properly, you have to take a lot of time off
01:53 work and school to get over the fact that you've had a major surgery, and you're losing
01:58 such a big part of your body, a whole part of your skin is coming off. Some people with
02:03 Poland Syndrome, the condition that I have, can have their back muscle taken from the
02:07 back and moved to the front to replace it. But then, if that fails, if your body rejects
02:13 it, then you are missing a back muscle and a front muscle. You'd have to decide whether
02:17 - if it does work - whether you'd prefer to have a stronger back or a stronger front.
02:21 And in my personal opinion, I think I would rather have a stronger back muscle.
02:26 So putting anything into your body that's not really supposed to be there, there is
02:30 always a risk. And I'm not against other people doing that, I absolutely understand that for
02:33 some people this absolutely changes their life. It improves their mental health and
02:38 self-image and how they feel about themselves, and it can really help people's mental health.
02:43 And I think that's great. So I'm not against other people having surgery, I just don't
02:47 want it for myself.
02:48 But we have to stop treating surgery like it is not a big deal. It's just something
02:52 that you can just go and do and have in your free time. It's not just a small thing. I
02:57 mean, I could do all of those things, or I could just live with it, which is the easiest
03:02 option to me.