British mom recollects trauma of botched Turkey beauty operations

A British woman says she is trapped in Turkey after suffering from serious complications from botched cosmetic procedures, including two bouts of sepsis. 

28-year-old mother of one Cennet Lo flew to Bodrum in April to receive a tummy tuck, liposuction and Brazilian butt lift. 

Four months later, however, she remains in Turkey in recovery after her cosmetic procedures went catastrophically wrong.

Speaking to ITV News, Lo recalled how she woke up mid-operation. 

‘I remember waking up and putting my head up and seeing liposuction being performed on my stomach’. 

Around two weeks after her surgery, Lo explained that her pain began to get worse.

She flew back to the UK and went to hospital twice, but ultimately had to fly back to Turkey on May 20 after she was told her surgeon should carry out corrective work. 

‘I was scared to go to sleep because i actually thought i was going to die,’ she said. 

Since she first went under the knife a few months ago, Lo has had to undergo four major surgeries to remove skin infections. 

But even the corrective surgeries have caused Lo distress. 

She claimed that after contracting sepsis for the second time, she went into surgery to close the open wound, but woke up to find out her surgeon had given her a whole new tummy tuck without her consent. 

She also recalled how she had dead tissue removed from a wound without any anaesthetic. 

‘He started cutting at my stomach with no local anaesthetic, no pain relief, no nothing. They had to hold my legs down, I had a woman holding my shoulders down,’ she told ITV News. 

But the horrific experience has caused Lo more than just physical pain. 

‘There’s been days I’ve been in so much pain I’ve not wanted to be here’. 

This comes after a British mother died after having a Brazilian butt lift in Turkey that she hoped would change her life.

Kaydell Brown, 38, of Sheffield, paid £5,400 for a ‘mummy MOT’ – a package deal involving a Brazilian butt lift, a tummy tuck and a boob job. The cost in Britain would have been around £15,000.

The hairdresser underwent the procedures at Clinic Expert in Istanbul on the morning of March 26, 2024, but never came out. 

Her heartbroken sister Leanne, 40, who was due to have the same surgery, slammed the Turkish clinic, branding it a ‘pop-up butcher shop that needs shutting down’. 

Leanne claimed that after medics informed her of her sister’s death she was handed an envelope of cash and was booked on the next flight home.

‘It’s like, ”Sorry she’s dead, here’s your plane ticket”,’ she told ITV.

Kaydell had hoped the surgery would get her life ‘back on track’ after she put on weight due to injuring her ankle, according to her sister

The number of complications from cosmetic surgeries abroad have been on the rise.  

According to the Foreign Office, 28 Brits have died after having cosmetic surgery in Turkey since 2019.

Meanwhile, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), those needing hospital treatment in the UK after cosmetic surgery abroad has shot up 94 per cent in three years — from 57 in 2020 to 111 in 2022, with 124 cases so far this year — with procedures carried out in Turkey accounting for more than three-quarters of those in the past six months alone.

The organisation started to ‘join the dots’, as BAAPS president Marc Pacifico puts it, two years ago, when colleagues shared stories of patients with complications arising from procedures abroad. ‘It became apparent that these stories weren’t one-offs,’ he recalls. He started an online database where those affected could share their experiences.

‘One of the fundamentals of plastic surgery best practice is whether you are doing the right operation on the right person at the right time,’ he says.

‘We were hearing things like tummy tucks on morbidly obese wheelchair-bound diabetics who should never be remotely considered for surgery. There were also many absolutely dreadful stories of aftercare — or lack of it.’