The “One Day at a Time” star said she’s “lucky to have survived” after undergoing three separate surgeries to fix the rupture and install a new implant.

Valerie Bertinelli details ‘really gross’ breast implant rupture: ‘My boob started to fall in on itself’

The "One Day at a Time" star said she's "lucky to have survived" after undergoing three separate surgeries to fix the rupture and install a new implant.

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and *NME*.

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March 11, 2026 10:54 a.m. ET

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Valerie Bertinelli in 2026. Credit:

Michael Loccisano/Getty

Valerie Bertinelli is looking back at the “really gross” side effects she experienced after rupturing one of her breast implants. **

In her new memoir *Getting Naked,* which is on bookshelves now, the *One Day at a Time* alum revealed that she underwent three separate surgeries after accidentally popping her right implant falling down the stairs. **

Prior to her first surgery, Bertinelli wrote that she consulted with a plastic surgeon who warned her of the “potential difficulty in cleaning out the ruptured implant” and confirmed that she’d “still need new implants even though the old ones were being removed.”

She underwent the procedure six weeks later. “My doctor showed me the old implants,” Bertinelli wrote. “They were like ostrich eggs, hard and crusted over. Lovely imagery, I know. I couldn’t believe they had been in my body. I went home bandaged and sore, with drains under my arms, uncomfortable but hopeful.”

Valerie Bertinelli at an event for her book.

Michael Loccisano/Getty

Everything appeared to be going great for the first two weeks of her healing journey...until it wasn't. “About a week later my right breast took on shades of green, yellow, and blue,” she recalled. “The next day it started to swell and turned a dark purple. I felt myself getting dizzy. By nighttime, I was running a fever.”**

Despite her symptoms, Bertinelli explained that she waited through the weekend and sought professional help on Monday. "By then, I was really sick,” she shared. “My breast was discolored, painful, and swollen. I was burning up. I had fluid leaking out of the sutures around my nipple.”

The first doctor she saw immediately sent Bertinelli to an aftercare clinic, where she received antibiotics, and a second medical professional recommended that they remove the implant immediately. She underwent her second surgery the next day, which "involved removing the implant and the infection from the tissue surrounding the muscle.”**

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The recovery process this time, however, came with another unexpected complication.

“Then my boob started to fall in on itself. The doctor referred to it as cratering. The description was accurate. Another apt word was gross. Like, really gross,” Bertinelli wrote. “It looked like a horror movie —­ and it was. I had an open wound the size of a misshaped quarter and a hole more than an inch deep where my nipple used to be. My nipple, or what was left of it, was holding on to within a literal half inch of its life.”

The *Drew Barrymore Show *regular shared that it took her right breast six months to “heal the infection, close the wound, and grow back some of the missing tissue” that it had lost. A month later, she had a third surgery that placed a smaller implant underneath the muscle of her breast and fixed “what was life of my nipple.”

Valerie Bertinelli on 'The Drew Barrymore Show'.

The Drew Barrymore Show

In the end, Bertinelli said it took the remainder of the year to recover from her multiple surgeries. Her breasts, she noted, have also changed along the way. **

“They are now two completely different sizes, the implant on the left is over the muscle, and my right side is sad and misshapen. (But it’s the small size I always wanted! Cloud, lining…),” she wrote. “Eventually I will have a fourth operation that will, I am assured, even things out once and for all.”

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Bertinelli added, “In all seriousness, I’m lucky to have survived. That weekend scared the piss out of me. After a lifetime of always thinking I needed to fix something about myself, this last go-round has been a doozie.” **

*Getting Naked *is available now.

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