GROWING PAINS

Michelle always yearned for bigger breasts – then a rare condition caused them to balloon out of control so she started crowdfunding for reduction surgery

- BY MELON RADEBE

WHEN she thinks back now to the times she prayed for bigger breasts, she can hardly believe it. She often wished theyd “magically” grow larger. But then Michelle Sekwena’s dream came true - and turned into a nightmare as her breasts kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

“My breasts were so small,” she says. “And then boom! They were so big.” In the space of a few months she went from a size 32A to 32G. Gone were the days when she could go bra-free. Instead she was hunting for the biggest bras she could find and had to endure the straps cutting painfully into her shoulders as the weight of her breasts pulled down on them.

“My breasts just kept growing and my nipples swelled to the size of my palm,” says Michelle (25).

After months of discomfort and pain, Michelle was eventually diagnosed with gigantomastia, a rare medical condition characterised by excessive breast tissue growth. It is noncancerous but can cause pain, infection and issues with body image, and can occur in one or both breasts.

Michelle is an introvert who enjoys staying at home, so the bigger her breasts got, the more antisocial she became. It didn’t help that she had to endure rude and inappropriate comments from strangers when she was in public, and at her retail job at a sports store in Pretoria.

“I’d get horrible comments from some people. I'd just pretend to laugh with them, but sometimes I'd get home and cry. I just couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.”

But thanks to the generosity of strangers from across South Africa, as well as from different parts of the world, Michelle can look in the mirror again and smile.

Donations to her BackaBuddy campaign helped raise the R150 000 she needed for breast reduction surgery, and in March this year she could finally get the excess tissue removed and feel normal again.