Cosmetic surgeries have been claiming lives of young ladies and women who indulge in them for some time now. I recently read about Kelly Mayhew who died last week after getting butt enlargement injections from an unlicensed doctor in the basement of a home in New York. Kelly, 34, and her mother had driven from Maryland for the procedure with a stranger in Queens, New York, after a friend of hers linked her up with the ‘doctor’. Halfway through the procedure, however, she started having difficulty breathing and was rushed to the hospital where she died. The woman carrying out the procedure was said to have fled and the police said she has not been found.
Kelly’s mum told the police that she has had five plastic surgeries before the one that killed her!
When I read that story, I immediately remembered a case I wrote on in my WOMANHOOD column in the defunct SUMMIT Newspaper some years back. It was about a Nigerian girl resident in London. Her case was very similar to that of Kelly. I, therefore, decided to reproduce the write-up, first published on February 3, 2011, to share my views on this madness called cosmetic surgery that women are recklessly losing their lives to. Happy reading:
In the July 15, 2010 edition of this column, I wrote a piece entitled “The Tragedy of Cosmetic Surgery”. In it, I discussed various cosmetic surgeries that women driven by inferiority complex undergo to change different parts of their bodies they believe are imperfect. I also listed the long and short-term health problems that these surgeries result to including death, and mentioned some of the recent series of deaths recorded in the UK and US as a result of the surgeries. I noted that foreign women are not the only ones undergoing the cosmetic surgeries as Nigerian women are very much involved in the risky operations, citing a Nigerian first lady who died on the operating table abroad in the course of a stomach-shrinking operation. I ended the write-up by counselling women to learn to be at peace with their physique and avoid the deadly surgeries.
This week, I bring you the latest casualty of cosmetic surgery, a British-born Nigerian girl who died of a heart attack on Tuesday after an operation in the US to give her more shapely buttocks. The 20-year-old student, Miss Claudia Aderotimi, who travelled from London to the US for the operation, developed chest pains and struggled for breath for 12 hours after she had the illegal butt enhancement silicone injections at a cheap hotel.
Miss Aderotimi had flown to the US with three of her friends on Saturday. Two of them went to a party in New York while the other one proceeded to Philadelphia with her to have the same operation she was going for. They checked into a room at the Hampton Inn Hotel that cost about 100 pounds. Miss Aderotimi had the buttock injections on Monday for about 1,300 pounds, while her friend had the same procedure along with a hip enhancement treatment. That friend survived the operation but Claudia died a day after receiving the injections.
Two quack female doctors were believed to have performed the procedure, for it took place in a hotel rather than a fully equipped surgical theatre, and the procedure itself was said to have been long outlawed in the US and Britain. The Police have searched their homes and are investigating whether they are part of a gang which lures unsuspecting women over the internet. They injected the silicon in the hotel room where Claudia and her friend lodged and left soon after. So, they were not there when Claudia began to complain of chest pains. Paramedics were called to the hotel on Tuesday and she was rushed to the Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital where she died 90 minutes later. A preliminary examination showed that the silicon filler had leaked into her bloodstream, leading to heart failure.
When detectives raided the home of the woman they believed set up the illegal operation, e-mails from Miss Aderotimi arranging the procedure were among items seized. It was discovered that Claudia was not having that procedure for the first time. She had been treated in November 2010, and the latest injection was believed to be a ‘top up’ procedure. She was thought to have wanted her butts enhanced as a birthday present to herself, about to turn 21 later this month.
Commenting on the incident in the Daily Mail, London, Dr. Paul Harris, a consultant plastic surgeon at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, said he had treated two patients who developed complications after receiving silicon injections overseas. He explained, “The problems are twofold. Firstly, if you use a low volume amount of silicon, it can promote rejection – the body trying to ward it off. That causes a long-term abscess which can damage the surrounding tissue. Elsewhere in the world, it has been reported to cause problems with pulmonary embolism, a blood clot to the lungs, which may have happened in this most recent case”.
In his own remark, Dr. Rajiv Grover, President-elect of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, explained that buttock augmentation is not commonly done in Britain, which is why the girls have resorted to going abroad. He stated that the procedure if done correctly, involves inserting solid silicon implants into the buttock just like breast implants, and it would be done in a fully equipped, sterile surgical theatre in a hospital with the patient fully anaesthetised. Dr. Grover said it appeared that Miss Aderotimi had liquid silicon injected which should never be done. He said it seems she got away with it the first time but wasn’t so lucky this time around. “…it’s like playing Russian roulette. Each time you have it done, you’re risking your life”, he added.
At Miss Aderotimi’s home in Hackney, East London, devastated friends and family members were said to have gathered to mourn her loss. Her sister Vivian was quoted as saying “We found out on Tuesday. We’re still in shock. We need to think about what we have to do.” Claudia’s mother, a healthcare assistant at Homerton Hospital in East London, said she was too upset to speak about her daughter’s death, while a neighbour said “We are struggling to cope with what happened. One girl died and one girl lived.”
It is regrettable that women care so much about their physique that they risk their lives just to look shapely. It is not worth it to sacrifice one’s life on the altar of beauty, for only the living can show off beauty or shapely figures. Whoever dies in the process of acquiring shapely curves that God did not give her would only have succeeded in wasting her precious life, and will account to God the Giver of life how she threw away the valuable life that He gave her.
Those surgeries or procedures are very risky and, therefore, should be avoided. Claudia’s operation was not properly done, but even the ones done correctly in hospitals end up with complications. Last year, a former Miss Argentina, Solange Magnano, was said to have died at the age of 38, after a buttock-enhancement procedure at a medical clinic in Buenos Aires. I am particularly pained about Claudia because she was a Nigerian. And God, she was so young! I wonder why she chose to undertake such risky adventure just to have rounder buttocks. Looking at her breasts in one of her photographs, it is clear that cosmetic surgeries were not new to her. Aside from the fact that the report said she had done the buttock enhancement procedure before this one that killed her, her breasts in the photograph show that she had had implants inserted in them.
Mothers must look well to the ways of their young daughters. Girls are too adventurous and worldly these days, and they can do anything in the name of fashion. We must also watch the kind of friends they keep, for they can easily be influenced by their friends. The report did not say whether or not Claudia’s mother was aware of her daughter’s adventures in the world of cosmetic surgery, and particularly the ill-fated trip to the US. Did she grant her permission to undergo those surgeries and to undertake that trip? The girl was still living with her mother (at least she would have been coming home on holidays even if she was in boarding school) and I wonder if her mother never noticed that her breasts were not natural.
Young women should find useful ventures to engage their minds, rather than spend the whole time thinking of how to look shapely. Mothers must preach this to them and help them identify their potential with a view to realising them. When they are engaged in productive ventures, they will spend less time thinking about their figures. Women, young and old, must learn to appreciate their bodies and accept themselves the way God made them, rather than undergoing surgeries that can easily claim their lives. Mothers should inculcate this in their daughters and advise them against undertakings that are not in their best interest.
There is need for girls and women generally to have confidence in themselves. No matter how lowly or inferior you think of yourself, there is something special about you. Every human being possesses some unique qualities, which stand them out (or have the capacity to stand them out) among other people. All you need to do is find out your special qualities and focus on them, rather than focusing on the parts of your body that you consider imperfect. It is not just the body shape that makes an individual. Rather, you are more of who you are on the inside. Your character or qualities and special abilities distinguish you from others and give you more value than what the most beautiful shape can ever achieve. There are things you can do which others with more shapely figures cannot. Focus on such things and boost your self-esteem, rather than focusing on your perceived flaws which could drive you into undergoing those risky surgeries.
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