I traveled from Michigan, and I’m not being paid to be here and I have no conflict of interest.
My name is Theresa Williams-Mott, and I’m known around Detroit as Tracy Barry.
I flew in a news chopper reporting traffic and lots of breaking news and sometimes juggling nine things at once. Nine.
Your head would explode if I sat here and told you what I had to handle up there. I was running the camera at the same time that I was reporting on a radio station, listening to cues on a TV station that I was holding their live shot for, and then waiting for them to come and take my shot and my report from me. I tell you this for a reason and I’m getting to it.
I had boundless energy, worked out all the time. I didn’t have an ounce of fat on me. Loved to work out until 1998.
I went and got McGhan textured saline implants. I loved them. Loved them. I was thrilled until I started getting depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, muscle fatigue, I couldn’t work out. Never connected it to the implants.
This went on for 20 years and got progressively worse, to the point where I became suicidal.
The depression got so bad, and I don’t think you’re hearing enough about the depression, and I think these reporters in here should really do a study and investigate how many women have committed suicide and had breast implants, because I’m one of them who almost committed suicide.
(Applause)
And I’m postop [post explant] a year, and I have had no depression, none. How did it vanish? Where did it go? Where did the anxiety go? Where did my microphone go? There it is. (Laughter.)
My nickname became Dory at the television station I was working at on the morning show because I couldn’t remember anything—from Finding Nemo. ‘Where are we going again?’ ‘What’s your name?’ ‘What are we doing?’ It was comical, but it’s not funny now looking back. I was losing my brain.
A year ago, before I had [explant] surgery, I handed my husband a piece of paper in the kitchen and said ‘Here, put this in the office.’ He came back two seconds later, and I’m spinning around trying to find the piece of paper, and he said ‘What are you looking for?’ I said ‘I can’t find the piece of paper I need you to put in the office.’ He said you just gave it to me. I stood there in shock and said what are you talking about? He said you just gave it to me. I just put it in there. I have no recollection of this, none. It was a total blackout. I was blacking out all the time. Wasn’t drinking. What is happening?
People are not talking about how implants affect your brain. They affect you, they cause anxiety, depression, and they cause suicidal depression.
And seriously, somebody needs to investigate this, and I think, shame on you, shame on you, this has been going on since the 90s.
My roommate in the hotel on this trip has been fighting you since the 90s. What is going on? What is this? I mean, really, you’re just sitting on your hands is what it looks like to me. You’re just sitting here and ignoring us, and you’re getting paid with our tax dollars.
(Applause)
Do something, do your jobs. We’re tired of it.
(Applause)
[Open public comment given by breast implant recipient Ms. Theresa Williams-Mott, at the General and Plastic Surgery Devices Panel, FDA White Oak Campus, Building #31, Great Room, on March 26, 2019. The title of this article does not constitute part of the speaker’s presentation to the FDA Panel, and any hyperlinks within the text or text appearing in brackets were added for clarity or ease of use by editors.]