Suzanne Somers: Off (Or On) Her Chest

Suzanne Somers Talks Experimental Breast Reconstruction: "I Have a Hard Time Keeping My Clothes on Now!"

Today 12:30 PM PDT by Josh Grossberg


Suzanne Somers went to extraordinary lengths to get herself back in bombshell-working condition after being treated for breast cancer 10 years ago.

In an interview on Friday's Anderson, the former Three's Company star talked to Anderson Cooper about the unique procedure she underwent to avoid having implants put in after having part of her breasts removed.

Her answer: regrow them.

"At the time when they took my breasts I didn't want implants...there's no feeling," she told the talk show host.

So the 65-year-old actress, bestselling author, and pitchwoman revealed that she sought out a doctor at the University of Tokyo in Japan renowned for using stem cells to successfully grow the muscle tissue back.

Somers told Cooper she brought good doc over to the States, "hooked him up with an American surgeon," and after some bureaucratic wrangling, got approval for a clinical trial with her as the subject.

"It took me three years of trial and error…[but] in August it came through, I was able to have the surgery," the former pinup said.

She then went on to explain the experimental process in detail.

"They took fat from my stomach—boo-hoo, okay you can have it," she added. "In a centrifuge at supersonic speed they [then] whipped out my stem cells, separated them, cleaned them… took the strong ones put them in a small amount of that fat they took from me, and with lack of a better term, with a turkey baster took that concoction injected into this breast and poof, you can see it."

According to Somers, the results were spectacular.

"They made it the size of the other one, it has feeling, it's soft, there are no scars," she said, drawing looks of amazement from Anderson and his audience. "I think it's the most incredible exciting thing to happen in breast cancer in a long time."

Her alternative approaches to cancer treatment haven't always been praised. The American Cancer Society has criticized Somers in the past for advocating alternative treatments to chemotherapy in her 2009 book, Knockout.

But that's not stopping the erstwhile Chrissy Snow from touting what she feels is a viable option for breast reconstruction.

"I have a hard time keeping my clothes on now; if I could I would show it's so great to have two breasts," she said.

We're glad she got that, um, off her chest.