Plastic surgery advances every day and you can walk into the doctor’s rooms and have all their flaws eliminated within hours.
But cosmetic surgery can go wrong, leaving one with disappointment and scars.
That’s exactly what happened to Mary Stradom*, 23.
At the age of 22 she booked a session to make her lips fuller with a doctor she heard of from a friend.
“I always knew that I wanted to enhance my lips. I felt I was old enough to make that choice,” said Stradom.
But after her first surgery, she realised that surgery didn’t really fix her flaws.
“I looked like I had a bird’s beak with a bubble on the tip,” she said.
To rectify the damage she had to consult three more surgeons. But even celebrities have not been spared from botched plastic surgery.
South African actress Khanyi Mbau is one of the people affected, with the star taking flak for “over bleaching” her skin.
Singer Mshoza also received a lot of negative reviews after surgery when he attempted to look like international rapper Nicki Minaj but failed.
Dr Anjana Bhana, a Cape Town doctor with a keen interest in aesthetic medicine, says aesthetic surgical enhancements are on the rise worldwide, including South Africa, but the non-surgical side of aesthetics has had more explosive growth than the surgical procedures.
Bhana said there was a health risk with a botched procedure with conditions such as vascular necrosis, blindness and further corrective treatment likely to follow. “With plastic surgery, all the risks associated with surgery, including infection and risk of loss of life, are there.
“It is important to note that these procedures are still medical procedures no matter how glamorous they seem to be, and one should have them done in a safe medical setting,” said Bhana.
Stradom’s botched surgery cost her emotionally and affected her self-esteem.
Her advice is to have some research done first before having the procedure done.
Stradom* is not her real name