“My body swallowed my boob.”
Probably not something doctors hear from patients every day (at least not sober patients) but it’s what one unidentified woman told Dr. Tiffany Fong of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins after a Pilates exercise caused the woman’s right breast implant to shift and end up between the lower part of her right lung and her rib cage.
ABC News reports that the woman had a history of breast cancer, a bilateral mastectomy and breast reconstruction, and had also recently had a procedure to repair one of her heart valves. Surgeons used the incision from the reconstruction procedure to enter for the heart valve operation which required a small incision between her ribs.
Dr. Gedge Rosson said it was the incision from the heart valve procedure that caused the woman’s breast implant to shift out of place. It happened when she was doing a breathing exercise called the Valsalva maneuver which involved “forcefully exhaling while keeping her mouth closed and nose pinched shut.”
The woman had waited the recommended amount of time after both surgeries to exercise and Rosson said this shouldn’t deter women from exercising after surgery once the recommended wait time has passed.
So….if this Valsalva maneuver can take things that stick out on your body and hide them…can some Pilates instructor figure out how to make it work on holiday weight gain? Cuz then we’ll go back to Pilates.