A woman was left with pea-size lumps in her lips after being injected by an unqualified beautician with filler that is used to resemble bone.
Michaela Hide, 31, from Eastbourne, Sussex, couldn’t eat, drink, talk properly or kiss her boyfriend after paying £220 for a ‘tweakment’ favoured by the likes of Kylie Jenner.
But instead of using a normal filler, the woman – who wasn’t medically qualified – pumped Ms Hide’s lips full of a calcium-based substance that is only ever used to enhance jawlines or noses.
When Ms Hide’s lips swelled up until they looked like ‘something out of a horror show’, the Sussex woman was charged a further £120 by the beautician to try to fix the problem.
A woman was left with pea-size lumps in her lips after being injected by an unqualified beautician with filler that is used to resemble bone
However, her lips ended up looking worse when the beautician filled her lips with even more of the substance, which is called Radiesse.
When a nurse then told her that nothing could be done to help, Ms Hide paid a plastic surgeon £1,020 to have two painful operations in which he cut her lips open and removed the lumps.
She said: ‘I looked like something out of a horror show,’ Michaela, 31, says.
‘I knew something was wrong straight away. I have a very high pain threshold but this was unbearable as she injected me about 20 times.
‘My lips were stinging and they swelled up straight away.’
Ms Hide was told by the beautician to go home and put ice on her ‘huge and painful’ lips, which did nothing to ease the swelling.
The Sussex woman said that within a couple of days, two giant lumps formed, making it hard for her to open her mouth.
Michaela Hide, 31, from Eastbourne, Sussex, couldn’t eat, drink, talk properly or kiss her boyfriend after paying £220 for a ‘tweakment’ favoured by the likes of Kylie Jenner and former Geordie Shore star Marnie Simpson
She was so horrified by how she looked that she did not go to work and stayed at home with a scarf around her face.
‘When my boyfriend at the time came round he went berserk screaming: ‘What have you done?’,’ she added.
‘He hadn’t wanted me to touch my lips in the first place and now I could hardly talk, eat or drink and definitely couldn’t kiss him.’
The panic-stricken customer services manager at Ladbrokes went back to the beautician, who had carried out the procedure at her own home.
Ms Hide said she ‘stupidly’ paid a further £120 for the woman to try to fix the problem.
But Ms Hide’s lips looked even worse after a second procedure. Her lips swelled further and where the beautician had pumped more filler in her top lip to close a gap which had formed, it became lumpy.
But instead of using a normal filler, the woman – who wasn’t medically qualified – pumped Michaela’s lips full of a calcium based substance that is only ever used to enhance jawlines or noses
However, because the beautician was not a medic or part of a clinic, Ms Hide said there was no one she could complain to.
After telling her to wait for the swelling to go down, Ms Hide said the beautician then blocked her.
She said she ‘really began to panic’ when a nurse at a local clinic told her there was nothing they could do.
She then went to see plastic surgeon Dr Mark Gorman.
He said of Ms Hide’s lips: ‘I have never seen anything like it,’ he says. ‘It’s a very rare case as this filler is used to augment jawlines and in noses as it stays twice as long and resembles bone.
‘To use it in the lips is crazy. It crystallizes and is often used in the back of hands to fill in spaces to make them look younger.
‘I tried to do some research to see how I could help and there aren’t any reports of a case like this so I had to improvise.
‘Michaela’s was a particularly terrible case as not only had the equivalent of bone been injected into her lips but the wrong technique had also been used which had compromised the blood vessels to her lips. This can cause the lip tissue to die.’
When Ms Hide’s lips swelled up until they looked like ‘something out of a horror show’, the Sussex woman was charged a further £120 by the beautician to try to fix the problem
After unsuccessfully trying to dissolve the filler, Mr Gorman cut into Ms Hide’s lips and picked out the lumps one by one.
The surgeon then used a different substance, called Revolax, to make Ms Hide’s lips even again and to stop new safe filler from spreading above her lip.
Ms Hide, who was ‘thrilled’ with the results of Mr Gorman’s intervention, said: ‘I was so silly to go to someone who wasn’t qualified, especially as it was at her home, but I didn’t imagine anything could go wrong.
When a nurse then told her that nothing could be done to help, Ms Hide paid a plastic surgeon £1,020 to have two painful operations in which he cut her lips open and removed the lumps
‘Having lip fillers is talked about in the same way as having your eyebrows shaped now, but, of course, it can go horribly wrong as I found out.
‘I didn’t do any research and it was cheaper than going to one of the well-known clinics, which I did once before years ago.
But I’ve ended up paying much more to correct them and will never have perfect lips again. I have scar tissue at the corner of my mouth where the big lumps were.
‘I’d heard of the filler the beautician said she would use, Radiesse, but it didn’t register that it wasn’t meant for lips.
‘Now I realise I’d heard of it because people talk about it online changing their jawlines.’