Botched Up Bodies (2013) - full transcript

[narrator]
When it comes to cosmetic surgery,

us Brits just can't get enough.

Last year we spent £2.3 billion

in a bid to be more beautiful.

It's about improvement,
refinement, retouching.

But without 200,000 operations every year,

it's no wonder that corrective surgery
for botched-up bodies

is also on the rise.

[Nick]
There is effectively no way of avoiding

ever having any complications.

Coming up, killer filler,



the woman injected with bathroom sealant.

This green stuff burst out of my face.

A butchered nose.

Horrifyingly,
the tip of my nose was missing.

And the boob job that never was.

It never crossed my mind
that he hadn't put one in at all.

Last year over 43,000 of us

opted to go under the knife to enhance,

shrink or boost bits of our body
in the name of beauty.

There are lots of facts and figures about
what can go wrong with cosmetic surgery,

but we rarely hear about

people who don't even get the operation
they paid for.

[Nick]
For a patient to be admitted to hospital

to have a breast implant inserted,



for it not to be put in,
would be extremely unusual.

But that's precisely what happened

to 26-year-old nail technician
Rachael Dallimore.

In 2006, she forked out five grand

for a breast augmentation.

[Rachael] I was a size,
probably cup size D, double D-ish,

but then I fell pregnant at 16.

I lost all the elasticity in my skin

and I lost any volume I had in my boobs.

Miserable and self-conscious,

Rachael decided to get implants
and an uplift.

When she woke up from the operation,
nothing seemed untoward,

but after a few months,
the scars weren't healing,

and her breasts
still looked small and saggy.

She wanted a pert bust,

but she's ended up with droopy boobs
and a mass of ugly scars.

I got in touch with the clinic

and they just fobbed me off, basically.

Said, you know, you need to wait

for the full 18 months
and then we'll have a look.

Concerned,
Rachael sought a second opinion.

After examining me,

he told me there wasn't an implant in.

He was shocked
at the state that I was left in.

It never crossed my mind
that he hadn't put one in at all.

Rachael was devastated.

She got back in touch with the clinic
that did the surgery originally

but was left bitterly disappointed.

[Rachael] They basically said
they'd done nothing wrong,

the procedure was done
as it should have been.

Didn't explain

as to why the surgeon
had decided not to put them in.

[narrator] The whole experience
has left Rachael feeling very low,

and her lack of confidence
is affecting all areas of her life.

[Rachael] I was very nervous

about intimacy.

I don't like any lights on.

I can't get undressed in front of anyone.

No, none of that.

It's just not how I wanted to look.

It's not what I'd planned to happen,
or what I'd paid to happen.

Hoping that something can be done
to fix her botched up boobs,

Rachael's travelled to London
to see plastic surgeon Nick Percival.

Those are very long and very poor scars.

I mean, you don't need me
to tell you that.

Now, sadly, we cannot take away the scars

without leaving another one in its place,

that's just a rule. I mean,

because the only thing
that we can do, which we can do,

is to cut out the scars

and make another one.

Now we've then go the option

of giving a little bit more volume

and shape to the breast
by putting an implant in.

If we just did it on its own

without an implant, let us say,

we would expect to end up

with a breast of that sort of shape
and size,

with the nipple now
in that position there.

Rachael decides
that she still wants bigger breasts

and opts to have the implants.

Every year in the UK 1.25 million of us

choose to pump our faces full of fillers

in the pursuit of eternal youth.

But the market's barely regulated.

Anyone from beauticians to builders
can inject your face with fillers

after just a four-hour course.

[Niall] Patients are none of the wiser
as to what's being injected into them.

It's really not something
that should be a high street product

that is injected by somebody
with no medical knowledge whatsoever.

Your face is a potential filler war zone.

In all, there are 13 sites
that can be plumped and smoothed.

The most common
being your forehead, crow's feet,

frown lines, nasolabial folds,

mouth frown and cheeks.

In 2006, 46-year-old Vicki Bailey
from Essex

paid £1,500

to have filler injections in her cheeks.

[Vicki] I needed something to kind of
boost my confidence a little bit,

cos I was very conscious
of some lines here

and some round here.

But the filler
leached into other parts of her face

and became seriously infected.

Suddenly I had these big lumps,
as big as peas,

underneath my eyes,

and then some had dropped down here.

But in the middle of the night
I woke up in a lot of pain.

I went into the bathroom

and one of my eyes
was closed up completely.

I was passing out with pain.
It was excruciating.

Things got so bad
she ended up in A&E terrified.

A doctor examined her
and the news wasn't good.

I was told
I was probably gonna lose my sight.

They had to keep forcing my eyes open

to make sure the infection
wasn't going to my eyeball.

If it had gone in there,
then it goes to my brain.

And he said once it goes to your brain
that's it,

there's nothing we can do, you're gone.

After six days on a drip,
the infection subsided,

but Vicki was left disfigured.

I felt like
I looked like the elephant man.

I just felt so ugly.

My confidence was on the floor.

It got that bad that
I even didn't wanna be here anymore.

It was only the fact that I had a daughter

that made me pull myself together
and carry on.

She had no choice but to find a new clinic

and pay to have the filler removed.

Over the last six years,
she's had three operations.

The initial £1,500
botched filler treatment

has already resulted
in her shelling out £15,000

to try and have the filler removed.

But the corrective surgery
was unable to take out all the filler,

leaving Vicki
fearing it could flare up again.

Cos I've got scars under my eyes now,

trying to cover them up all the time.

I've still got lumps underneath my eye

and I'm constantly
trying to push 'em down.

I'd hate for anybody
to have to go through what I went through.

[narrator] Desperate to know
if anything else can be done,

she's in London to seek a second opinion

from consultant surgeon Niall Kirkpatrick.

She has had an MRI scan

to identify the location
of the remaining filler,

and he wants to discuss the results.

Here are your eyeballs, and you can see
that as we go down the face,

we're just coming to the bottom
of the eyeball sockets,

you can see these little beads
just there, there and there.

With the areas of concern now identified,

Niall goes through is plan for surgery.

We're gonna make a little cut
just underneath the eyelashes

and then I can lift up the layer

and tunnel our way down,

so that hopefully
you'll have a very fine little tiny scar

which should heal extremely well

and not cause any problems.

Sounds simple, but surgery
near the delicate tissue of the eye

can be fraught with risks.

The most important risk,
whenever you're operating round

there's a really tiny risk of blindness

from blood tracking behind the eyeball.

Niall will have to dig deep
to rid Vicki's face of filler,

but will this finally mean
an end to her six years of hell?

You can see that we're getting
some of the more liquid filler out.

And the woman who is left disfigured
after a botched nose job.

[Rita] I just remember thinking,

"How on this earth
has he done that to my nose?"

It was absolutely excruciating pain.

Following botched breast augmentation
in 2006,

which not only left her with scarred,
sagging boobs,

but also without the implants
that she had paid for,

26-year-old Rachael Dallimore

has decided to go back under the knife.

She is at the Welbeck Hospital in London

under the care
of plastic surgeon Nick Percival.

I'm really excited
about not having all the scarring,

all that being gone after,

I think it's nearly seven years

that I've lived with it.

And later today it won't be there anymore.

[Nick]
There are three elements to the surgery.

The first part of the surgery
is putting in the implant,

the second part
is redoing the breast uplift,

the mastopexy,

and that combined with the third part

which is, of course, revising the scars.

[Nick] The breasts
have not really been well lifted,

and they've dropped significantly.

She's got really very, very bad scarring
from this surgery,

much worse than we would expect
from an operation like this.

And, unfortunately,

we can't make them any shorter

or move them into positions
that they're not already in,

but I think we can make them
cosmetically better than they are now.

In terms of their dimensions,

these I think probably the worst scars

that I've ever seen
for this particular operation.

[narrator] After injecting a mixture
of local anaesthetic and adrenalin

to control bleeding,

Nick makes a pocket
to put the new implant in.

This is a Nagor silicone gel implant.

It's 330 grams in weight.

Once the implant is in place,

Nick moves on to realigning
the nipple position.

So, going to cut around

the nipple areola,

so we can move this in position.

Because the nipple
at the moment is too low,

it's drooping down
in the bottom of the breast,

so we're going to move it up
into a new position.

He then starts to remove
the outer layer of skin

and the old scars
caused by Rachael's botched surgery.

Whether it's something inherent
in the way that she heals,

or more likely it's something to do with

the way that the wounds
were stitched together,

and perhaps there weren't enough

supportive stitched placed in it

when she had her original surgery.

Now the stitched I'm putting in now

are the stitches which I hope

will prevent that horrible stretched scar

from recurring.

These are dissolving stitches

and they should last a couple of months,

during which time the body will have,
hopefully, stuck this together.

When he's happy with the left breast,

Nick moves on to the right.

[Nick] When you're doing revision surgery
of this type,

you've always got to be
a little bit careful.

If you haven't done the first surgery,
you're not quite sure

how the previous surgeon has done it,

and that potentially
can lead to difficulties.

Nick gets to the end of surgery
without encountering any problems.

With the implants definitely in this time

and the old scarring removed,

Rachael's seven-year ordeal
could finally be over.

Rhinoplasty has become
one of the most popular

cosmetic surgery procedures in the UK.

Last year, 4,518 of us

chose to go under the knife
in pursuit of the perfect nose -

a rise of 7.4 % year on year.

As the number of surgeries increases,

so do the number of complications.

[Niall] We are very much dealing
with a three-dimensional structure.

So, a small manoeuvre
of a millimetre or so in one direction

will have significant effects on the nose
in another direction,

which are not always
completely predictable.

As 37-year-old Rita Payton
from Liverpool found out.

Acutely self-conscious of her appearance,

she decided that she wanted surgery

to remove an imperfection on her nose.

I had a little bump just on the bridge,

and I just wanted that removed.

I just wasn't too happy with it.

Think I'd broke it a few times as well.
I was getting a bit older

and I just wanted it sorted out
just to make it look a little bit better,

As you get a little bit older
you want things doing, don't you?

So that was what I wanted doing.

After extensive research,

she thought she'd found the perfect place
to have her procedure.

She was expecting to wake up
with a smooth nose,

but she's ended up botched,

with mangled nostrils
and a tip that has been sliced clean off.

When Rita first came round
from the operation

and looked in the mirror,
she couldn't believe her eyes.

I saw it was a monster, it was horrible.

There was blood all over my face,

all down my neck.

Horrifyingly,
the tip of my nose was missing,

and I just remember thinking,

"How on this earth
has he done that to my nose?"

I couldn't breathe. I was petrified.

I literally feared for my life.

In pain and alone,

Rita was desperate to get home,

but her son's reaction to her appearance
cut her to the quick.

And he was just like,
"No, Mummy. No, Mummy."

Wouldn't come near me.

You just want a hug, don't ya,
off your baby to make you feel better?

And he wouldn't. It was horrible.

And I knew
that this was it for the rest of my life.

He'd made me look like a monster.

That's the only way I can describe it,
like a monster.

[narrator] Rita thought
things would improve with time,

but as the swelling and bruising subsided

the full magnitude
of her botched-up nose was revealed.

He'd somehow

cut me right nostril clean,

so it resembled a cat,
or a dog if you like,

the way the noses have got slits in.

This nostril was completely caved in.

And the bump that I'd paid to have removed

off my nose was still there.

Rita's surgeon
offered her corrective surgery,

but all he did was cut into her nostril

and fill her with filler,

a procedure that seriously affected
her ability to breathe.

[Rita] I was sitting in the back kitchen
with my son,

who was four,
and we were playing pat-a-cake,

and next thing I had this pain in my side,

like I've never felt in my life,

and I knew my lung had collapsed.

And I knew straight away
it was all to do with my nose.

The pain, it was nothing but pain,
pain and agony.

It was awful.

With her life now at risk,

Rita was able to seek help on the NHS.

She went on to have two operations,

but in spite of intensive rebuilding,

she still needs more help.

Today, she is at the Whiston Hospital
in Liverpool

to see her plastic surgeon
Mr Azhar Iqbal.

He was shocked and appalled
when he first saw the results

of her botched surgery.

Even for the normal rhinoplasty,
you would not expect nostril to collapse.

I think it's a disaster.

Part of the problem, as I said,

this nostril was very, very tight.

The problem still with the scarring,
the nose still tends to pull to one...

Lift up your chin for me, please.

Yeah, I can see this
pulling a little bit to one side.

During her corrective surgery,

Rita had cartilage taken from her rib
grafted to the bridge of her nose.

Mr Iqbal suggests further surgery,
but there are risks.

The drawback is that
it gives you more fullness in this area,

which is less desirable.

The only problem sometime,
to shave it off,

we have to raise the whole skin.

It may become a little bit unstable
and displaced again,

but there are things
which are unpredictable.

I understand that, yeah,
you said that to me last time.

- So, we'll see how much we can do safely.
- OK.

Unfortunately for Rita,

no amount of surgery
will totally fix her botched-up nose.

It's sadly something
she'll have to live with.

My expectations
are not to look too far ahead,

just to take each day as it comes.

I'm very angry at the fact that the doctor
who originally done my surgery

is out there right now

doing the same thing to someone else.

I've been to hell and back
through what I've been through.

I will always have a disfigured nose
for the rest of my life.

For many women,
big is definitely not beautiful.

Last year 5,000 over-endowed ladies

decided to get a breast reduction.

Of those, 5% had complications.

All cosmetic surgery operations
have a sort of danger,

if you like, that you don't want to occur.

In breast reductions it's always
the blood supply to the nipple.

28-year-old single mum from Brighton
Sarah Taylor

had a problem with her nipples,

but it wasn't down to the blood supply.

Having always hated her 32F boobs,

she decided to get a breast reduction,

downsizing to a smaller, more pert pair.

Having big boobs and being quite young,

I found quite awkward.

If you went out, men would comment on them

and that made me really insecure.

I wanted to have them reduced

so that I could get rid
of some of the sagging

and also some of the weight,
cos it was causing a lot of back problems.

Miserable and self-conscious,

Sarah decided to get a breast reduction

at a clinic she'd found
in the back of a magazine.

When I went in for surgery,
I was really, really excited.

I knew that afterwards

I would walk away confident
and happy in myself.

When I came round I could see,

even underneath the bandages,
the result would look better

because it was a lot smaller
than I was used to

and it felt a lot lighter.

I was feeling quite happy
and quite at ease and comfortable.

But her initial excitement
turned into crushing disappointment.

She paid £6,000 for the op

that left her botched up

with nipple tissue
in all the wrong places.

I just ended up bursting into tears.

I had what looked like old nipple

underneath my nipple
that hadn't been cut away.

When the surgeon admitted
that he'd botched the operation,

leaving her with excess nipple tissue
underneath each breast,

she bitterly regretted not spending
more time choosing the clinic.

[Sarah] If I could turn back time,
I would have done a lot more research.

I just saw this advert
in the back of a magazine

and because it was
in a reputable magazine,

I just assumed
that it was a reputable company.

Whereas now, I'd rather take the time
and make sure that I got the right result.

Her hasty decision

has ended up affecting
every area of her life.

I found it really hard to trust boyfriends
from that point

because I didn't wanna take my clothes off
in front of anybody,

and to think, you know,

that they were gonna accept me

with the problems
that I have with my breasts,

in case they saw it and thought,
you know, I was some kind of freak.

With her self-confidence in shreds,

Sarah has travelled to Harley Street
in London's West End

to see consultant plastic surgeon
Nick Percival.

She wants to know if he can do anything

to rid her of the unsightly
excess nipple tissue for good.

The brown discolouration in the skin,

which was round the areola
and has now been moved down,

in my view can be removed.

And, at the same time,

problems with the scar tissue

that you showed me there,
particularly on the left breast,

that can be addressed as well.

But it's not all good news.

Now, I'm afraid
you are going to have to recognise that

any second operation
is more risky than the first one.

- Right. OK.
- Generally speaking.

The previous operation has disrupted

the blood supply to various tissues

and we have to recognise that

and be prepared for that.

If the blood supply is further disrupted,
the risks for Sarah are quite significant.

And you could lose all sensation
in one or both nipples

- with a revision operation.
- Right, OK.

And that could be permanent.

But it's a risk
Sarah believes is worth taking

to get rid of her excess nipple tissue.

[Sarah] To me it does feel
like it's necessary,

but I'm nervous about the after effect.

Plus, botched up beyond repair.

The woman injected
with industrial grade bathroom sealant.

[Rajee] I felt like a monster,

some sideshow circus freak.

In the UK, the number of cosmetic fillers

on the market is on the rise.

But unlike breast implants and botox,

dermal fillers
are deemed to have no medical purpose,

and are regulated in the same way
as toothbrushes

and ballpoint pens.

It's no wonder
that these permanent beauty boosters

are leaving people
with very permanent problems.

Six years ago, mum of two Vicki

had filler injected into her cheeks,
but it migrated.

If the infection,

which is caused by the filler,
flares up again,

it could potentially kill her.

They said once it goes to your brain,
that's it,

there's nothing we can do, you're gone.

She's about to go under the knife

to have cosmetic filler removed
from under her eyes.

Vicki is under the care
of surgeon Niall Kirkpatrick.

[Niall] Putting filler material
in is very easy,

getting permanent filler material out
is very difficult.

Ow! God!

Going dizzy now, am I meant to be?

Yeah, that's the cocktail.

It's an extra strong one.

God, it's like having about ten vodkas!

My general, personal feeling is that

permanent filler should be banned,

because the vast majority of problems
that we are seeing

are related to the permanent fillers.

What we're going to do first of all

is just put some marks

on where the area
that we need to remove is.

You can see that
as we put the local anaesthetic in,

the eyelid swells a little bit

so we start to lose the definition
of where the lumps were,

which is why we mark them out beforehand.

I'll take a corneal shield, please.

So just to protect the eye itself,

we just put one of these in
during the surgery.

Niall is placing a stitch in the eyelid

which will enable him
to manipulate the area more easily.

Next, he makes his incision.

So, what I'm doing now

is just separating the skin
away from the muscle

until we get down to the area

where the granulomas are coming through.

Just here
we've got a little yellow granuloma here.

It's just a very small one.

You have this line of yellow material

all the way along the lid here.

This is what's giving the lid
that very yellow look to it.

I'm going to start to remove that.

This is just a question of
painstakingly removing this material.

So, you can see that as I squeeze the lid,

you can see that we're getting
some of the more liquid filler out,

some of it is the reaction to the filler.

So far Niall has worked on the area
closest to Vicki's eyelid,

but it's time to move deeper.

So, you can see here
we have really quite a firm granuloma

as a sort of reaction
to the filler material.

We've now tunnelled past
the area that we've marked out,

so now I can concentrate on
trying to get it lovely and smooth

and remove the yellow.

Painstakingly,
Niall removes each small granuloma,

syringing the eye of blood
and tissue as he goes.

I can't see any major irregularities
anywhere now.

OK, let's got everything dry.

Having removed all the beads of filler,

Niall closes up,
then puts local anaesthetic in the eye

to reduce bruising and swelling.

After this, her fourth operation,

Vicki is now free
of the last traces of filler.

After two weeks of healing,
Vicki is back in London

for her final consultation with Niall.

So, it will take
a little bit longer to settle,

I just need you to keep doing that
little tiny circles like that

and that'll start to smooth and settle it.

The damage caused by her original

£1,500 filler injections

ended up costing in excess of

£20,000 in corrective surgery.

I'm just really happy with it,
I really am happy. I'm so pleased.

Well, it's gonna be even better
than it is at the moment,

much better, cos when that little ridge
has gone it will also be much better.

Yeah, it's better just now,
even now looking at it.

I'm over the moon
when I look in the mirror.

No probs, they've all gone.

Niall has removed the tiny balls of filler

that were shattering Vicki's confidence,

now her face is totally free of filler

and her six year nightmare
is finally over.

It's changed the way I feel about myself.

I had no confidence whatsoever.

I was just so scared and paranoid,

everybody, when I was talking to them,

they were looking
at these awful little lumps

which looked like peas under my skin.

And it's amazing looking at my face now

and I haven't got them it's fantastic.
I feel over the moon.

And I think it shows in my personality,

I'm not all shy
and don't wanna talk anymore,

people can't stop me talking now.

In a market that is barely regulated,
Vicki is one of the lucky ones.

But for others who have had
their face cosmetically injected,

there is no quick fix
when it all goes wrong.

In the US, where the filler industry
is tightly regulated,

you'd expect the number of botches
to be much lower,

but greater regulations
create other risks.

It costs around £150
for a syringe of filler in the UK,

but in America it's $1,000.

The sky-high prices stateside

are pushing people onto the black market
where they're being injected with cheap,

illegal and sometimes lethal fillers.

You can have these injections done
and you're gonna die,

and it's definitely not worth,

you know, saving a few hundred dollars

to have your cheeks injected
with something that could kill you.

Rajee Narinesingh,
a 46-year-old activist from Florida,

had fillers injected into her cheeks
on the black market.

Desperate to feel more womanly,

she thought
they would enhance her femininity.

[Rajee] I considered myself
to be an attractive person,

however I felt
that there was something missing.

I didn't have the body that I wanted.

I didn't feel that I was feminine enough,

like, I felt like I needed more.

But she got much, much more
than she bargained for.

a black-market practitioner
filled her face

with industrial grade bathroom sealant,

leaving her with a botched-up,
infected face.

I couldn't afford to do it the right way,

the right way being

going to a certified plastic surgeon.

To save money,

Rajee started asking friends
for recommendations

for black market practitioners,
and was told about a local woman.

[Rajee] She came across very knowledgeable
about what she was doing.

She assured me

that what she was injecting in me
was medical silicone

and, based on those facts,

I felt pretty confident

that she was gonna take good care of me.

[narrator] But Rajee was wrong.

I laid on that table in her room

and she started to inject

what I thought
was medical silicone into me.

You know the saying beauty is pain?

That day I had to, literally,

chant that in my head,
because it hurt like hell.

She told me that, you know,
this is normal.

After she finished the injection,

she would plug them with super glue,

and I'm laying there thinking,

"Oh, my God, what have you done?"

But once the pain wore off,

Rajee was delighted with the result.

So, delighted, in fact, that she went back

for more filler in her body.

And I figured I'd work my way down.

So, the next thing
was to get injections in my breast.

And then I proceeded to do

my hips and my buttocks.

[narrator] Bur Rajee's newfound confidence
was short-lived.

Just nine months later,

she woke up to find
she'd suffered a horrible reaction

to the bathroom sealant

that had just been injected into her face.

When I think about that day,

I get very emotional, I really do,

because it was the beginning

of a lot of hard times for me.

The whole left side of my face
felt like a huge boil,

and I couldn't understand
what was going on with me.

And, all of a sudden...

this green stuff

burst out of my face on the mirror,

and it was just pus oozing out of my face,

just disgusting.

And, unfortunately for Rajee,
that was just the beginning.

[Rajee] I felt like a monster.

You know, I'd walk out in public
and people would look at me

like I'm some freak,

some sideshow circus freak,

that's basically how it was.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning

and I'm laying in my bed thinking,

"What did you do to yourself?

What did you do to yourself?"

I did think about suicide, I did.

So...

it's been a rough road.

[narrator] Since then,
Rajee's had two emergency operations,

but because the filler
has bound with her tissue,

now her only option

is to try and soften it
with laser treatment.

She's booked an appointment
with her plastic surgeon

and hopes desperately
that he can help her further.

Following an operation
to remove excess scarring

from a previous botched boob job,

Rachael is back in London
for a consultation

with her plastic surgeon, Nick Percival.

Still a little of bruising hanging around

but that's pretty much...

I think, what we would expect this stage.

It all looks good,

and they feel reasonably soft,
I think, for this stage.

The unsightly scars have been removed

and her breasts have been given an uplift.

- Are you pleased with it so far?
- Yeah. Yes.

And has it sort of achieved

what you really wanted to get
from the original surgery?

Yeah, it has. It's exactly what I wanted.

There will always be a scar there,

but hopefully it will not be as wide

as the scars that were there before.

But essentially,

we've now got the shape back
that you wanted.

Rachael is also confident in the knowledge

that this time round
the implants that she's asked for

have actually been put in.

[Rachael]
This is all I wanted from the start.

I never wanted massive boobs,

I just wanted 'em to be nice shape,
just where they should be.

[narrator] For seven years,

Rachael lived with the results
of her previous operation.

Now she can start regaining her confidence

and put here botched up surgery
behind her.

Absolutely over the moon with the result.

Waking up in morning and then looking

and it's all different.
It's amazing. I love it.

But will Sarah's operation,
to have excess nipple tissue removed,

be just as successful?

[Nick]
There's usually a stage in the operation

you think
something has gone fairly seriously wrong.

And Rajee has treatment to try
and free herself from the bathroom sealant

that was injected into her face.

Yeah, it's still pretty hard
once I'm in there,

it's why it's so hard to inject.

In Florida, a transatlantic botched-up
body is about to get help.

46-year-old activist Rajee

is on her way to see plastic surgeon
Dr John Martin.

She wants him to fix
her filler-injected face,

after a black market practitioner
injected her

with industrial grade silicone

normally used as bathroom sealant,

leaving her disfigured and in pain.

You know I'd walk out in public

and people would look at me
like I'm some freak,

some sideshow circus freak.

Hi, Rajee. How are you?

Dr Martin is working to reduce
the nodules of filler in her cheeks.

When I first walked in to see Rajee,

my first impression was just wow,

this is unbelievable
what has happened to her face.

She said to me, "I feel like a monster.
I look like a monster,"

and she was crying.

I really felt incredibly sorry for her,

because she had done something
to try to improve her appearance

and ended up with a totally deformed face.

Let's start in here first.

Today, he'll be starting
her next course of treatment.

See how these nodules are doing.

These are almost gone.

It's your magic.

These were much larger

and they really came out like distinct,

very distinct huge nodules

that you wouldn't have been able

to move them like you can now,

because they're so much softer.

When people have small nodules,
we would just go in and take them out,

but that means
you have to do some sort of a surgery.

And hers were very large,
so what I ended up doing

was an incision on one side initially...

almost like a facelift incision,

dissecting down under the skin

and trying to take out the nodules
on one side,

just to see if I could do this.

They were so hard

that I really couldn't even cut through
them with my scissors,

so it was a very,
very difficult procedure.

I was able to take
some of the substance out,

but she still ended up
with some residual nodules.

OK, so I have a little bit
of our steroid here.

[narrator] The injection will shrink

and soften the remaining
pockets of filler,

making removal eventually possible.

Yeah, it's still pretty hard
once I'm in there,

it's why it's so hard to inject.

- Yeah, just rub in that in for me.
- [Rajee] Beauty is pain.

[laughs]

Pain is beauty, right?

Rajee is also having laser treatment

normally used for hair removal.

The intense pulse light machine

sends heat into the deeper layers
of the skin,

which softens the lumps of filler.

After a number of treatments,

the filler should rise up
through the face tissue

to the epidermis just below the skin.

Once there it can be removed.

As we start to shrink down these nodules,

the question is
what's gonna be left in there?

Is the muscle gone? Is the fat gone?

And is she gonna then be hollow
and depleted?

Then we have to figure out another way

to sort of fill it in so it looks smooth.

Unfortunately for Rajee
there's no quick fix,

and she will have to endure
many more treatments

before she can even begin to get rid of
the bathroom sealant

that's left her face botched.

But she can at least be thankful
to be alive.

The woman that injected Rajee
is also now up on manslaughter charges

for one of her patients
who died after her injections.

[Rajee] My message to anyone out there

who may be considering going for these

black market injectables, don't do it.

Don't do it.

Because you can end up dead,

or you can end up like me.

Mum of one Sarah

has decided to take the risk
of losing sensation in both of her nipples

and go under the knife for a second time

to get her botched-up boob job fixed.

She is at the Welbeck Hospital in London

worried how her recovery period
will affect her daughter.

I'm nervous about the after effects,

like not being able to look after Lily
the same way,

or not being able to cuddle her and stuff.

I find that quite upsetting,

but I'm just trying to remain
as calm as I possibly can.

Surgeon Nick Percival is set to operate.

Cosmetic surgery operations have a sort of

single important detail,

a sort of danger if you like,
that you don't want to occur,

in breast reductions it's always
the blood supply to the nipple.

- You ever seen this before, Sati?
- No, never.

I haven't seen this much.

Nick plans to redo the breast reduction

and get rid of the excess nipple tissue
that's left her so unhappy.

The first thing we have to do

is we have to make, what we call,

the pedicel.

This is the piece of breast
that contains the nipple's blood supply.

If it becomes damaged,
it could lead to necrosis,

a devastating complication

which could see the breasts rot and die.

One hour in,
Nick starts the delicate process

of removing the epidermis,
the outer layer of skin.

We're not taking all the skin off

because I know
that the network of blood vessels

which supply the skin

lie just deep underneath
what we call the dermis,

which is the deep,
thicker layer of the skin.

It's an important part of the surgery,

because of course if we lose the blood
supply of the nipple and areola

it will go black and fall off.

So effectively, you see, this nipple now

is on an island, isn't it really?

It's living off the blood supply
which is coming through from here

into the nipple, which keeps it alive.

Nick works carefully
to avoid damage to the nipple

as he cuts and discards
any excess breast tissue.

It's usually around about this stage
in the operation,

when you're seeing it for the first time,

that you think something
has gone fairly seriously wrong,

and once we start
putting things back together

you'll sort of see how it's all gonna fit.

Nick has cut away the excess tissue,

as well as decreasing Sarah's bust
a little further.

I want the nipple to look pink,

because pink is good cos that means
it's got a good blood supply.

Nick manages to get to
the end of the operation

without any damage to the blood supply,

which means he can now close up.

At long last Sarah's free

from the unsightly excess nipple tissue.

Her boobs have been lifted and reduced.

Three weeks later,

Sarah goes to see Nick
for her final consultation.

And how have things been?

Really good.
Yeah, I'm really happy with the result.

You know
that with these sorts of operations,

it does take time
for everything to settle down

but, you know,
you've made a fast recovery.

We've have no issues or problems at all.

Nick has removed the excess nipple tissue

and unsightly scars left behind
from her previous botched boob job,

giving her pert, symmetrical breasts.

I can see no good reason

why that tissue was not removed

at the initial operation.

I do consider it poor,
unsatisfactory surgery.

So, overall, are you glad you did it?

Really glad. Really happy with the shape,
everything. Really happy.

Over the moon with the results,

Sarah now feels
she can move on with her life.

I think the results are amazing.

The surgery has far surpassed
what I expected.

I just feel like a whole new person.

[Nick] I'm, like her, very pleased
with the outcome of the surgery.

We've achieved a nice result,

so that's what we wanted to do,
that's what we've done.

Lovely, thank you.

[Sarah] Now that I've had the surgery,

it's made me feel like
I've got a whole new lease of life.

It's fantastic.

The pursuit of perfection has seen
more and more people taking risks.

They wanted a better body
but have ended up with a botched-up body

and a hefty bill to repair it.

With risks and complications,
even if you tell patients,

"Well, there's only a 5% chance
it's gonna happen,"

most people will think,

"Well, I'm gonna be
in the 95 percent that it doesn't."

But the only people
who never have any problems,

are the people who never do any surgery.