A 23-year-old woman from Manchester is hoping to raise £8,500 for a breast reduction after years of living with chronic pain and anxiety. Kiya says her breast size has affected almost every part of her life, including struggling to walk for longer than five minutes without being in pain.
Living with macromastia since childhood
Kiya has had a large chest since she was around 10. Her breasts began developing when she was around nine or 10, and by the time she was 14, she says, she was already around a double D and approaching an E cup. She has lived with the consequences of macromastia, a condition in which excessively large breasts can cause physical discomfort and other health problems.
Over the years, her breasts have continued to grow, while the pain and limitations surrounding them have become increasingly difficult to manage. Her back pain, which she says began to worsen significantly around six years ago, eventually became chronic. She experiences neck and back pain, sometimes accompanied by painful spasms that can last minutes or hours. Her posture has also suffered, and she has developed a noticeable hump at the base of her neck.
Physical and mental toll
The weight of her breasts has caused dents and cuts in her shoulders from bra straps, while the constant discomfort has made everyday activities increasingly difficult. She says she can now walk or run for only around five minutes before she needs to rest. For someone who once enjoyed gymnastics, dance and ballet, that loss of mobility has been particularly painful.
"I used to do all kinds of sports," she says. "I've done gymnastics, I've done dance, I've done ballet. I just felt like that was when it kind of went downhill because I wasn't able to do any of those things anymore."
As her physical health deteriorated, Kiya says her mental health did too. She describes experiencing severe anxiety and depression, particularly as her physical limitations began preventing her from doing things she wanted to do. She has struggled to leave the house and has experienced panic attacks when faced with going out or doing things beyond her home.
NHS applications denied four times
Kiya has tried to find other ways of managing her physical and emotional health, including talking therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy and physical therapy. Therapy helped her deal with experiences from her past, but it did not resolve the physical problem. Her attempts to access a breast reduction through the NHS have also been unsuccessful. She says she has applied through an Individual Funding Request process four times and has been declined.
On one occasion, she says, she waited around two years before discovering that her initial application had not been submitted or recorded properly. She was particularly frustrated by what she understood to be the criteria used to assess her applications. The psychological impact she experienced was not taken into account in the way she had hoped, while the physical symptoms alone were considered insufficient to warrant surgery.
Turning to fundraising
Kiya has now decided that she needs to explore private treatment. She estimates that breast reduction surgery in the UK can cost upwards of £8,500, a sum that is far beyond what she can afford. She has therefore started a GoFundMe campaign in the hope that strangers might help her raise enough money for the operation.
Her preference would be to have the procedure in the UK, where she feels she would be more comfortable navigating the healthcare system, although she says she would consider travelling abroad if necessary. Kiya says her anxiety makes the idea frightening, and she has concerns about receiving treatment away from home. She has also thought about the additional barriers she may face as a Black woman navigating healthcare in an unfamiliar country.
"I feel like when I'm paying that much money, I'd also rather be safe, like, in the country that I'm in, in case anything ever happens," she says.
Hopes for the future
Kiya remembers being sexualised because of her chest from a young age. By 14, she says, she was already conscious of people looking at her differently. "I want to be able to wear the cute little tops without feeling like, because it shouldn't, it makes you feel, 'slutty'," she says. "It just makes you feel kind of disgusting, and it shouldn't, but it does, especially when you're 14 years old."
In terms of hopes for the future, she wants to walk with her family and friends, and return to activities she once enjoyed. She wants to go to university and study psychology. She wants to feel comfortable buying clothes and getting dressed. She wants the possibility of a relationship without feeling held back by the way she feels about her body.
"I've never felt comfortable enough within myself or within another person to even fall in love," she says. "I've never had a boyfriend."
Kiya is hoping that a breast reduction will give her the opportunity to reclaim some of those things. She is not promising that surgery will solve every problem in her life, but she believes it could remove one of the biggest barriers standing between her and the life she wants.
