Christine Rosenthall, 62, used a beauty gift card for treatment but botox poisoning saw her life turned upside down aand left her forking out more than 100 grand on medical bills
The red gift envelope with a bow on it was a family member’s thoughtful present to Christine Rosenthall, who loved a trip to the beauty salon.
It contained a gift card worth $200 to go towards a facial and Botox injections, but in the minutes that followed the appointment in January 2025, Christine immediately regretted it.
“Something told me that day not to do it. But I ignored that feeling and went ahead anyway,” says 62-year-old Christine, from Pittsburgh. “I had had Botox twice before. This time I had it just above my lips and in my forehead, but by the time I got home I could taste metal going down the back of my throat.
“An hour after that, the whole nightmare began. The anxiety that came over my body was unlike anything that I had ever experienced in my life. “My throat felt like it was closing and my tongue felt like it was swollen,” retired nurse Christine remembers. “I said to my husband Eric, ‘We need to get to the emergency room’. It was the beginning of months of misery that turned the couple’s lives upside down.
The doctor confirmed she was having a reaction to the Botox, told her to take steroids and an antihistamine, and go home. But this had no effect. “It wasn’t touching what was going on in my body,” says Christine.
That night she returned to hospital and sought help again. Since then, she has made an estimated 30 emergency room visits and has been hospitalised four times.
Christine, who was previously healthy, has suffered from a host of symptoms which she blames on the toxin, including blurred vision, memory loss, difficulty swallowing and blood clots in her legs and lungs. She has mast cell activation, bradycardia, nerve damage, anxiety and depression, and has lost weight, going from 13 stone to 9 stone and has had to give up her job as she is now too ill to work.
One doctor, alarmed at the levels of inflammation in her body, was concerned that she had blood cancer. Another doctor told her she would need to be put into a nursing home.
“In one hospital I kept vomiting and the doctor thought I was anorexic. I was begging for help. They tested me for MS, lupus and other things. Everything came back negative,” says Christine.
“Overnight I lost a lot of my hair, big chunks of my eyebrows, and my memory is horrendous. I had suicidal thoughts, like I just didn’t want to live anymore. It was the darkest thoughts I had ever had and I was just crying throughout the day. I told Eric, ‘Please, I need help.’ “I would just sit there and rock, like a mental patient. I was so sick.”
Eric had already retired from his role as a school principal when Christine fell ill, and had hoped to return to part-time work in some capacity. However, he has been unable to because she needs full-time care. They have visited nine hospitals locally and travelled to two of state for help. Months after the injections, a doctor diagnosed Christine with iatrogenic botulism, or Botox poisoning, when the toxin spreads beyond the injection site and throughout the body. She was told she needed an antitoxin medication, but that there weren’t any available locally and, by this time, it was far too late. Eric says: “Botox commercials state that if you have a reaction, you should see your primary care physician. However, they do not know how to treat it and are not educated on the residual effects of Botox poisoning. “The botulism is now eating away at her body. At one point, we had a doctor say that if she keeps losing weight you need to take her to the emergency room. We did that and they said: ‘Well, unless she’s dying, there’s nothing we can do’. Nobody knows how to deal with this.” The couple have had to remortgage their house to the tune of $130,000 because they have spent so much on ambulance trips, out-of-state and specialist appointments, rehabilitation stays and other costs. “It is a mental strain, a physical strain and a financial burden,” says Eric. Christine says the symptoms are now fading, though there are relapses along the way, and she is no longer the woman she used to be. “Every day is a challenge. 18 months on, the severe anxiety has subsided and four months ago I could stop taking the medication I was prescribed to deal with it. I still have relapses. “The poison is supposed to be out of my system now, but I still struggle with mast cells and bradycardia. Every day I think, ‘Will I ever get my life back? Will I be okay?’ I pray to God, ‘Please take this feeling away.’ I keep fighting, but some days are just too hard.”
Christine wants others to think carefully about what they do to their body, and to do their research before going for injections.
She says: “This is something the devil gave me. Please don’t get fillers. Don’t get Botox. It’s poison you’re putting in your body. But if you do, and you suffer, please find someone immediately who understands botulism poisoning and can get you the antitoxin, so it doesn’t hit your body systemically.”
Eric adds: “Our life has completely stopped. Christine couldn’t drive for eight months. We couldn’t go away or go out. She didn’t see my family for a year. Thank God things have improved now, but there needs to be more awareness about the dangers. There are women all around the world who are suffering. All it takes is a dose of the antitoxin to prevent them from going through the nightmare that Christine and I are going through.” Allergan, the company that manufactures Botox, were contacted for comment.