‘My mum thought I’d been beaten up’: Woman tells of trauma after botched lip filler treatment caused her lips to go black and DIE
Claire Hawkins has ended up shelling out £1,500 on her lips over the past two years in a desperate attempt to get them right
A WOMAN has told of her horror after her botched lip filler treatment caused the skin on her mouth to blister, turn black and start to DIE.
Pretty Claire Hawkins, from Somerset, had always wanted a bigger top lip and was delighted to find a beauty therapist that was willing to come to her house to do the procedure.
But the now 23-year-old was left traumatised when her lips painfully swelled to almost three times their natural size and became lumpy as the filler had been injected in the wrong place.
After living with her damaged lips for over a year, she eventually sought treatment from an experienced cosmetic doctor who repaired the damage, bringing the total Claire had spent during the ordeal to a staggering £1,500.
Claire, an administrator, explained: “I just didn’t like my lips as they were, everyone in my local area starting getting lip plumping stuff and getting their lips done, so I just jumped on the band wagon.
“I went to one previous place but she wasn’t happy to put in the amount of filler that I wanted. She thought I was too young at 21 and wasn’t happy to do it.”
After several rounds of 0.5ml treatments, Claire wanted more noticeable results and approached Mercy Beauty Clinic, having seen examples of their work on .
She sent them a photograph of what she had in mind and was told how much filler she would need to achieve her ideal look.
In June 2015 the practitioner came to Claire’s house; but when she arrived there was no consultation as to what she was having done.
Within 30 minutes of being injected with 1.5ml of filler in her top lip and 0.5ml in her lower, her lips swelled up and became very painful.
But the practitioner reportedly told her she would be fine and to pop some ice on her lips, before taking her £360 and leaving.
That evening Necrosis – an irreversible process where large areas of body tissue die due to a lack of blood supply – started to set in.
Claire admitted: “It ached but I just thought it was normal. They went all black and I could taste blood in my mouth, but I thought it was just bruising.
“I was horrified. I didn’t want to leave my bedroom. My mum was absolutely fuming with me, she thought I’d been beaten up they were so swollen and black.
“I had to go into work on Monday and it was still swollen, so I had to put lipstick on to try and cover it.
“I was just looking down and everyone was talking to my friend at work, asking if I was OK as they thought I’d been hit as well. It wasn’t nice.
“The swelling did eventually go down, I didn’t look like a monster for ages, but as it started to fade out you could see where the lump was and it was just uneven.”
Claire later returned to Mercy Beauty Clinic for another treatment.
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But despite her lips clearly not being right, the practitioner happily obliged and injected more filler into her mouth.
Claire left it a year before approaching another cosmetic doctor to have her lips corrected.
In April 2016 she walked passed the window of a clinic owned by experienced cosmetic doctor Beatriz Molina.
She saw it offered lip augmentation and decided to see if there was any way she could repair the damage she had been living with for the past year.
Speaking about Claire’s visit, Dr Molina recalled: “When we first saw Claire we did a full medical consultation and it was obvious that she need to have a correction of a previous treatment.
“There were lumps all over the inside of her mouth, worse in the upper lip. The shape of the lip was still too large and uneven.”
Dr Molina found that the filler had been injected in the wrong place, mainly into the submucosa, a layer of areolar connective tissue lying beneath a mucous membrane, as well as behind the muscle.
Despite the fact a year had passed, the poor results and damage were still blindingly obvious to an expert eye.
Dr Molina said: “It is shocking to see how someone can inject a lip so badly, endangering a young person’s looks.”
She gave Claire a hyalase injection to dissolve the existing filler and three days later applied a correction treatment using a dermal filler.
After six weeks – two years since Claire had initially started having fillers – her lips finally began to look natural again.
Claire recommends anyone considering getting fillers to really do their research and look at the practitioner’s before and after photos for clients that they’ve worked on.
She added: “When I showed Dr Molina photos of what my lips had looked like she said I was lucky my lips didn’t die off.
“Don’t go to somebody just because it’s cheaper.”
Responding to a request for comment, Mercy Beauty Treatment told The Sun Online on July 15 that it denied the allegations and said that "the client was in fact very happy with the service we provided her with.
"Her messages to us in July last year stated she was happy with the lip fillers and had recommended us to her friend. This clearly showed she was happy with our service after her second treatment with us.
"She also sent a message in January to ask what our lip offers were at that time to re-book for her third appointment."
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