A nursery worker has issued a stark warning to those considering breast correction – after surgery to ‘perfect’ her chest resulted in a fatal infection that caused blood to ‘spurt’ from her breasts, leaving her disfigured for life.
Paige Harvey, 21, had long been ‘desperate’ to reduce her double-K cup size due to debilitating back pain and unwanted attention from strangers.
A breast reduction, she said, would keep her size 8 frame from looking “ridiculous” and help her pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a paramedic – which involves physical work that can be hampered by chronic back pain.
But hours after the operation, her wounds tore open, leaving her “in a pile of my own blood.” Despite this, she was fired by the private clinic which charged £8,000 for the procedure.
Paige Harvey described her K cup bust as ‘ridiculous’ and hoped a surgical reduction would improve her quality of life.
She developed an infection that caused her breast tissue to ‘eat itself’ and rot away, leaving permanent scars and an unsightly lump protruding from her armpit.
“Three years later I still have to go to hospital appointments,” Mrs Harvey said.
‘I now have a swelling the size of a golf ball in my armpit and the doctors don’t know what it is; it hangs out of my bra like a lump.
‘I paid up to a D cup, but I’m now an H cup, so the surgery was a waste of money.’
Ms Harvey says her naturally large chest has long been a disadvantage.
‘I would have to wear a size 14-16 top even though I was a size 8. I was quite small but I had a huge chest.
‘One bra cost £60 because I had to have it specially made. I had a 3 foot back, but my chest was absolutely huge, I looked ridiculous.
“They were heavy, my back was killing me and my skin was tearing underneath.”
Mrs Harvey claims she suffered open wounds covered in blood when she returned home from hospital.
The teenager suffered from fat necrosis, which cuts off the oxygen supply to fat cells, causing the tissue to die.
The attention her bust attracted was ‘the wrong kind’. ‘I didn’t want to wear granny sweaters on a night out, but I had to because there would be reactions.’
Ms Harvey did her research and settled into a private clinic, booking in for surgery on October 7, 2021.
But shortly after the surgery was over, she started noticing some red flags.
‘I was discharged about two hours after the operation. They called my mom to come get me, but I was high as a kite.
‘I first realized something was wrong halfway through the clinic after surgery.
‘My mother started crying, I asked her what was wrong (I looked down) and I was in a pile of my own blood. Blood was leaking through my clothes.”
Ms Harvey’s mother called the clinic to express their concerns but was told to stay home.
‘My whole chest was black and blue from all the bruises and the underside was quite red. Half of my nipple was gone because of the infection,” Ms Harvey said.
The trainee paramedic is left with a lump under her armpit as a result of damage to the fat cells in her breast
After a follow-up appointment at the clinic a week later, where the staff changed the bandage and said everything was fine, she started to feel bad.
She checked her wounds and found that they were weeping and bruised, so she asked the doctors for antibiotics to tackle the infection.
However, the drugs did not work and the infection continued to ‘ravage’ both breasts, ‘eating away’ at the tissue.
“I was getting sicker every week,” she said. ‘I had a fever, slept 16 hours a day and at one point the doctors thought I was about to become septic.
‘My whole chest was black and blue from all the bruises and the underside was quite red. Half of my nipple was gone because of the infection.”
Ms Harvey said her concerns were ‘not taken seriously’.
‘They kept telling me I was doing well. One of the times I started crying and the nurse said, “I think you’re just feeling sorry for yourself.”
Ms Harvey asked to reduce her cup size from a K to a D, but complications from the operation left her with size H breasts.
‘I went back again (due to the infection) and was asked if I was touching my hands, insinuating it was my fault I had an infection.’
After thirty boxes of antibiotics over the course of a year and changing bandages every week, Mrs Harvey continued to feel as if her body had been ‘butchered’.
Six months after surgery, she discovered a hard lump the size of a golf ball in her left breast and was referred to Borders General Hospital in Melrose, Scotland, where it was discovered that she had fat necrosis.
Fat necrosis is a benign lump in the breast that develops from dead or damaged breast tissue.
Mrs Harvey said: ‘It’s smaller now, but if I wore a top without a bra three years later you could see the grape-sized bump through my clothes.’
Now her breasts have healed, but they are ‘lumpy’ due to keloid scarring, and she still has swelling under her armpits.
Ms Harvey believes the clinic staff treated her ‘disgustingly’. She said: ‘I was so sick and I was just insulted all the time.’
Three years later, she has urged those considering breast reduction to push for NHS treatment if possible.
“If you can get it on the NHS, do so because you know you will be taken care of,” she said. ‘Companies just want the money. At least in my case they did.’