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MY REGRETS
I was left with a huge hole in my hip after botched fat jabs – don’t make my mistake
A WOMAN has revealed that she has been left with a huge hole in her hip after having fat injections.
Shauna Brooks first started on a course of the treatment when she was just 16 years old.
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Now she is warning others to not make the same mistake she did, after the now 33-year-old was left in excruciating pain from the silicone jabs.
The transgender activist, actress and model initially used the injections in a bid to make herself curvier.
She had been using them since her teenage years as she tried to achieve a more feminine body while she was transitioning.
Despite using them on a regular basis, she said she didn't notice any side effects until over a decade later.
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It was only then, she said, that she started to experience excruciating pain, discolouration of her skin and dimpling.
Shauna, who lives in the US said: "I was young and naive when I had it done. I have so many regrets because I now have a hole in my hip.
"It's drastically disfiguring, disgusting, and a horrific process.
"If I didn't get it removed, I would have ended up in a wheelchair, or even worse, I could have died.
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"Growing up being regularly attacked for my gender expression. It led me to want to feminize my look."
She explained that in her community, there had been a practitioner known for giving trans women aesthetic enhancements.
She added: “At the time, I was just 16, so I was young and naïve, but others had trusted her to get modifications done, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.
"I thought getting the enhancements would make people see me more as a woman if had a more enhanced female silhouette.
"I had 30ml of what I thought was silicone injected into each hip, and the whole thing cost me around £700 ($800).
"I just recently found out it was not medically graded silicone, and it was actually a cancerous substance."
Silicone injections are outlawed in the UK.
Silicone is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US and is illegal to inject.
The FDA says that when injected into areas with many blood vessels, silicone can travel through those vessels to other parts of the body and block blood vessels in the lungs, heart, or brain.
It's dishearteningly disgusting to endure, and it has affected me not only physically but psychologically as well
Shauna Brooks
It was ten years later that the bottom half of her body started to cause her issues.
Shauna had been unable to get out of bed, or walk, stand or even sit still for too long.
For Shauna, aeroplane trips had become unbearable and she also started to feel pins and needles in her hips.
It was at this point, she said, the skin on her hips started to change colour.
Shauna added: "I have been battling the pain and side effects for the last two to three years.
"At first, I thought the pain was because I was no longer on hormones. I never imagined it could have been to do with my injections.
“The past two years, the pain has been intolerable. I only discovered it was to do with the botched injections after I went to see a doctor about complications with my breast implants, and he pointed out my hips.
"I was sent for an MRI two months ago, and when the results came back, the doctor told me it was cancerous, and he had to get it out of me as soon as possible."
Now she has been left with sunken skin, has had drains inserted to remove fluid, and has horrendous scars which she says now affect her career as an actress and model.
EXHAUSTING
She continued: “The removal of the silicone has been painfully exhausting and emotionally draining."
Luckily, Shauna's surgeon has managed to remove 95 per cent of it.
"But now I’ve been left with a hole in my hip.
"It's dishearteningly disgusting to endure, and it has affected me not only physically but psychologically as well.
";I want to make sure no one else goes through this by getting injectables in their body.
"There’s no reason why anything should be injected into the human body that isn’t medically approved.
"If my doctor hadn't noticed this while performing my capsulised and ruptured breast implant removal and I hadn't had it removed, I very well could’ve ended up losing my mobility left in a wheelchair.
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"It's been a devastating journey that has ruined my life.
"If all goes well with my recovery process, I'm hoping to do fat transfers to try to reconstruct my hips in the future to help me get my body back," she added.
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