‘I really feel dodgy face fillers have scarred me for all times – I don’t wish to look in mirror’
A mum who fears she has been scarred for life after having dodgy face fillers is backing the Mirror’s fight to crack down on cosmetic cowboys.
Samantha Lougher, whose face erupted in giant pus-filled boils, is the latest victim of an unregulated aesthetic industry to support our campaign. The 58-year-old mum from Cheshire, said she can no longer look in the mirror after she had some ‘botox’ on her fine lines on her chin.
Sam, who is a full time carer to her mum, was left with huge boils around the injection site which turned into abscesses. “It’s crazy. It has messed up my life, I don’t want to go out any more, I don’t want to go anywhere. It’s been horrendous, the worst thing ever,” she told The Mirror.
“I feel like it has ruined me. I don’t want to look in the mirror, that’s how bad it is. I say to my daughter all the time ‘I just hate my face’. I don’t see anything else.”
Samantha told how she went with her friend who was having some Botox in a room at the back of a hairdressing salon and decided she’d have some done too for £170. She wanted to look her best for her childhood friend’s wedding in Spain and had filler before with no problems.
But this time she was left with pus filled abscesses and missed her friend’s wedding – too upset to leave her hotel room. Recalling the work she had done, Samantha said: “I did it because I was going on holiday to Marbella. I wanted to get rid of a few fine lines on my chin.
“I signed something on her phone and she put some numbing cream on and started to inject the filler. She injected about ten times and I remember thinking ‘I didn’t realise there were that many lines?’ I felt that it was really painful, which is not normal. My friend even said ‘I can see you are in agony’.
“When I got out it bruised straight away and felt really hot. The redness just went into blisters and huge boils all around my chin area, and they were just full of pus. I still went on holiday but didn’t go to the wedding and sat on my own crying. I never went out.
The Mirror’s three cosmetic demands
1. Cosmetic operations such as liposuction, surgical face lifts and surgical eye lifts, should only be carried out by properly trained surgeons on the General Medical Council specialist register. These surgeons should have UK Board Certification in Cosmetic Surgery for their area of practice.
2. All operations and high risk procedures must be surgically safeand carried out in clinics and hospitals inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
3. Make it a legal requirement for beauty clinics who offer non-surgical interventions to have malpractice insurance.
“I called the woman because I was worried and she said it would go down and to put a cold compress on it and pop the blisters. She also told me to stop taking the aspirin I was on. ”
It is suspected the needle the ‘aesthetic practitioner’ used was dirty or the area was not cleaned properly. Talking about the Mirror’s call for more regulations in the cosmetic surgery world, she said: “I think it is a brilliant idea after what’s happened to me. My face is scarred now for life.
“People are dying because there are people who don’t know what they are doing. I only went with a few fine lines, I’m so sorry I went now. This was August and I’ve still got lumps in my face.
“I can’t look in the mirror and it’s still bad, I can feel people looking. It’s like I’ve got bad acne scars.”
After going to her doctors and having antibiotics she went to see one of the UK’s leading aesthetic doctors, Dr Ed Robinson, to help put it right. He is also backing the Mirror campaign and fears she was given contaminated filler or needle, or the skin was not cleaned prior to injection.
Dr Ed is continuing to treat the scarring and said: “I support the Mirror’s campaign because the lack of regulation in the UK aesthetics industry has allowed clinics to thrive which do not carry out these procedures to the meticulous standard required for safe patient care. This patient received substandard care and an avoidable complication.
“She also received inappropriate medical advice – she was advised to stop aspirin by a non-medic for her clotting disorder. Patients are often drawn in by clinics which look safe due to their marketing and social media followers.
“The prices these clinics charge are very low and are indicative of using poor quality products which are often not sourced from pharmacies. We are seeing a dramatic increase in filler-related complications as dodgy practitioners who are non-medical cut corners to extract profit from their patients.
“Urgent regulation is required from the government to protect patients and the NHS which increasingly has to pick up the complications from aesthetics.”
