Woman’s botched fillers made her lips swell 5X their normal size
Filler was accidentally injected into artery
Filler was accidentally injected into artery
Filler was accidentally injected into artery
Ever thought about getting lip injections? Well, you may want to consider this news out of the U.K., where one woman is dealing with the aftermath of up five times their normal size after accidentally getting them injected into an artery.
The 29-year-old woman, Rachael Knappier, was at a Botox party at her friend’s house in August when she decided to try lip injections, courtesy of the party’s hired beautician.
But rather than injecting a bit of filler into Knappier’s lip tissue as is standard practice, Knappier says the beautician injected filler into an artery, causing her lips to massively swell and cut off circulation to the tissue.
“She told me I was having an allergic reaction, but when I got to the hospital, they told me straight away I was not, and that the filler had been administered incorrectly,” Knappier tells Cosmopolitan. “Left untreated, it would have led to necrosis, which is the death of the soft tissue of your lip — something that’s irreversible.”
Knappier says she required multiple emergency surgeries to fix the botched injection from someone who she believed was a licensed professional.
"The beautician, who I assumed at the time was a nurse, didn’t ask me to sign any consent forms, so alarm bells should have rung,” she said in an interview with . “But being at a party with friends took away all the seriousness of having filler injected into my face.”
It took almost two weeks for the swelling in Knappier's lips to finally subside, but thankfully, three months after the hellish experience, she says she’s “back to normal,” though “it could have very easily been a different story for me.”
Now she’s just trying to live her life and help others avoid the same situation. “I am trying to raise awareness of the dangers of using nonmedically qualified people to administer Botox and fillers,” she said.
“It is such an unregulated industry in the U.K., and I didn’t even know that nonmedics could do this,” she added. “People need to do thorough research on the people they allow to carry out these procedures.”
The easiest way to do that? Get yourself to a board-certified dermatologist, and think twice the next time (if ever) someone in your friend’s living room offers to inject your face with something.