Valerie Bertinelli is looking back on facing “gross” complications from her breast implants that she says “scared the piss out of me.”
In her newly released memoir, “Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect,” the “One Day at a Time” star explains that her problems started after she suffered an accident and fell down the stairs in her home.
“I sprinted down the stairs, tripped, and landed on my right boob. I heard a pop. I knew exactly what had happened,” she writes.
As a result, the actress, 65, found herself having surgery to remove her breast implants after a plastic surgeon confirmed she had ruptured one in her fall.
“Six weeks later, I had the surgery. My doctor showed me the old implants. They were like ostrich eggs, hard and crusted over,” she continues.
“I couldn’t believe they had been in my body. I went home, bandaged and sore, with drains under my arms, uncomfortable but hopeful,” she notes, adding that “everything was great” for “the first two weeks.”
“About a week later, my right breast took on shades of green, yellow, and blue. The next day it started to swell and turned a dark purple. I felt myself getting dizzy. By nighttime, I was running a fever.”
She goes on: “I stayed in bed, figuring that was best. Tylenol, and lots of water, and tea. When I got up, though, the pain was intense. My breast was throbbing and it kept getting worse. I knew I had to see the doctor, but it was Saturday morning. I decided to wait until Monday. By then, I was really sick. My breast was discolored, painful, and swollen. I was burning up. I had fluid leaking out of the sutures around my nipple.”
Upon her second visit to the doctor, Bertinelli ended up back on the surgery table to have the infected implant removed once again — just three and a half weeks after her initial procedure.
“The second surgery involved removing the implant and the infection from the tissue surrounding the muscle. Recovery took more time. Then my boob started to fall in on itself. The doctor referred to it as cratering,” Bertinelli explains.
“The description was accurate. Another apt word was gross. Like, really gross. It looked like a horror movie — and it was. I had an open wound the size of a misshaped quarter and a hole more than an inch deep where my nipple used to be. My nipple, or what was left of it, was holding on to within a literal half inch of its life.”
Things began to look up for the actress after her third surgery — which took place seven months after her first corrective surgery — where she received another small implant and had “what was left of [her] nipple” restored. But, she’s not out of the woods yet.
“They are now two completely different sizes. The implant on the left is over the muscle, and my right side is sad and misshapen,” Bertinelli writes.
Bertinelli — who has openly talked about her journey of self-acceptance in the past — hopes to “even things out once and for all” and close the chapter on her breast augmentation saga with a fourth surgery.
“In all seriousness, I’m lucky to have survived. That weekend scared the piss out of me. After a lifetime of always thinking I needed to fix something about myself, this last go-round has been a doozie,” she shares.
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