A woman has been left with a lopsided chest after two separate boob jobs both went wrong.
Holly McCulloch, from Greasby, Wirral, decided to go abroad to have her breasts enlarged after seeing an advert for a clinic in Turkey on Instagram.
She shelled out £2,700 for her treatment, which included a five-day all-inclusive villa stay, and opted for a G-cup sized chest.
Speaking about her decision to get an enhancement, Holly explained:
I’ve been self-conscious about my boobs for as long as I can remember. I’ve always been really flat-chested and it’s something that began to really bring me down as I got older.
When I saw the ad for the clinic pop up on Instagram I thought it looked amazing. There were pictures of this lovely villa and loads of gorgeous girls who’d had work done there.
There were even a few celebs and I thought it couldn’t be dodgy if high profile people were choosing it.
She exchanged messages with the clinic via Whatsapp, and although she did question how official the process was, she was reassured after speaking to an employee.
Holly explained:
I thought it was a bit weird because it didn’t seem very official, but I never paid a penny until I got there so that reassured me.
There was a phone call at one point with a man with a London accent and that put any worries I had to rest.
The 28-year-old flew to the clinic in August 2018, and although she realised it wasn’t the same one she’d seen on Instagram, she wasn’t deterred.
She continued:
It definitely needed a lick of paint, but it wasn’t bad enough to put me off.
After I’d gone up and settled into my room the coordinator came to see me and get payment – £2,700.
He just said don’t eat after 12pm and someone would come and collect me at 7am the next day to take me and the other girls to meet the doctor.
Holly had a consultation with the doctor, who high fived her when she said she wanted ‘big boobs’. A few hours later the doctor came to take her into surgery, and things continued on their worrying path.
The Brit recalled:
I was anxious because it all felt strange and rushed, but I had made my decision and at the end of the day, more than anything I was just so excited.
The doctor came to get me four hours later with the trolley and wheeled me down. The first time I really started to feel worried was when they sedated me in the elevator – I didn’t expect that at all.
Obviously I started to get woozy pretty quickly and the last thing I remember from before the surgery was the doctor saying to me ‘you wake up with big boobies!’
Following the surgery, the 28-year-old woke up in agony. She realised she’d vomited on herself, as well as wetting herself, and described the experience as similar to going through ‘medieval torture’.
Holly explained:
It hadn’t been cleaned up and I remember thinking I looked like I’d been through medieval torture.
A nurse soon came in, turned the light on and started to wash me. I noticed that my boobs were massive but was in too much pain to be happy.
Each time she touched me, I was in agony, it was like my chest was on fire – all I could do was sign for her to pass me my phone and I frantically typed into the translator ‘I can’t take anymore’.
She was taken back into the operating theatre, where her implants were swiftly removed, leaving her skin stretched out and saggy. The doctor appeared to place the blame on her, seemingly changing track after his previous high five, as he said ‘I told you no big boobs!’
He advised Holly to go home to heal and return at a later date for free replacement implants.
She said:
I’m not a medical professional, so how was I to know those implants were too big? That was the doctor’s job.
Had a doctor told me that what I wanted was crazy, I’d have been fine and just gone for the largest possible for my body.
Holly agreed to give the boob job another try, and returned to the clinic five months later, in January 2019, for another operation. She was given D-cup breasts, and this time was well enough to travel home with her new boobs.
However, during the flight Holly felt ‘like she was dying’.
She described:
I became extremely nauseous and I leaned forward at one point to vomit – but fell forward right on to my boobs.
I screamed out in pain – I’d never felt anything like it, it was like being hit with a car. The cabin crew gave me oxygen and arranged for a wheelchair to be waiting for me in Amsterdam airport, where I had a connecting flight to Manchester.
Holly was taken to a medical room in the airport and given antibiotics, pain killers and a cooling gel. An ambulance picked her up from Manchester airport, and took her to Wythenshawe Hospital.
Doctors spotted a large blister along the incision mark of the left breast which Holly hadn’t been able to see, and gave her antibiotics to combat the infection, but the 28-year-old’s ordeal only got worse.
The worried woman said:
Each day I was waking up with a top soaked in green and yellow gunge.
But I became even more worried when the skin across the blister turned back – it was like a huge hole under my breast and I became convinced I’d been given black implants.
The 28-year-old returned to hospital, where she was told the black hole was dead skin. She was discharged and told the skin would grow back, however she became more concerned when the hole started to smell ‘like rotten meat’, and seep a yellowish liquid.
In February, while changing her son’s clothes, Holly heard a ripping sound, and saw her implant poking out of her skin.
She went to a specialist plastic surgeon in Chester, who told her they had to remove the left implant or else the infection would end up killing her.
The implant was removed, leaving the devastated woman with one size D breast, and one size B.
She explained:
I felt my chest and it was obvious without even looking that there was a massive difference in the size – I didn’t need to look in the mirror to know I looked disfigured.
She plans to have a £1,000 replacement implant in three months time to correct her wonky chest.
I’d have thought her experience would have been enough to put anyone off plastic surgery, but hopefully the next implant will be successful!
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.