Quest for perfect bum leaves her with no limbs : Los Angeles

She was obsessed with having perfect buttocks and she was prepared to do anything for that.

But former hairstylist Apryl Michelle Brown's dream backfired.

 

 

The 46-year-old mother of two from Los Angeles had to undergo a quadruple limb and buttock amputation. She has now come forward to warn other women against black market silicone injections.

Speaking to British TV channel ITV's This Morning programme from Los Angeles, Ms Brown recounted how she spent five years in excruciating pain when an unlicensed practitioner injected her buttocks with bathroom sealant, telling her it was silicone, in order to enhance them.

Doctors had no idea how to treat the botched implants and told her she might have to live with the agony.

But when they finally operated, they found so much damage that she was put into an induced coma.

It was only when she woke up two months later that she discovered what medical workers had done to keep her alive.

She said her life changed after a woman visited her hair salon a few years ago, saying that she had silicone injections.

Said Ms Brown: "I hadn't done any other research, so I didn't know all the horror stories.

"I went to someone's home - she wasn't licensed, but I didn't know that then - and lay on her daughter's bed, wearing special panties.

"She told me I'd need four sets of injections, and when she started to do them, it was very painful. I could feel it going into my nerves and muscles."

The pain did subside and she returned for a second lot of injections. It was when she left the house the second time that she had "an epiphany".

"I thought, what are you doing? And that was a sign to stop," Ms Brown said.

Soon, things began to go dramatically wrong. The area around the injections became incredibly painful. She described it as "like a toothache, labour pain and a migraine". 

Ms Brown, who has daughters Danye, 22 and Courtney, 21, told The Sun: "Within a few months of the second injection, my buttocks began to harden.

"But shame stopped me seeking medical help. As time went on, it got worse as the skin blackened. I developed hard lumps.

"Then the searing pain started. I had to tell my doctor what I did."

She spent the next four years in constant pain. In February 2011, a surgeon operated unsuccessfully.

Ms Brown developed a hole in her buttocks - thought to be the trigger for an infection that was nearly fatal.

Doctors put her into an induced coma for two months while performing 27 operations - starting with amputating her buttocks - and doing extensive skin grafts.

She said: "They saved me, but gangrene set into my hands and feet. I was brought out of sedation shortly before I became a quadruple amputee."

She spent the next six months in hospital. After she was discharged, she said she was determined to turn her life around.

She said: "I decided to do a triathlon. I took my first steps again by the end of 2011. I built up to training six days a week, learning to walk, cycle then swim again, using my residual limbs. I'd be crying in pain, but I'd push through it.

"And six weeks ago I did it - completing a 4km walk, 16km cycling and a 150m swim. When I crossed that finishing line with my family cheering me on, I cried tears of joy."

Ms Brown said she didn't seek compensation because she wanted to move on.

"But I believe I survived to share my story. I want to warn others of the dangers of black market operations. We were born whole, perfect and complete." 

Source : News Asia One ,3rd June 2013