A 20-year-old British woman who underwent a series of cosmetic procedures in Turkey says she nearly died after contracting a rare flesh-eating bacterial infection.
Newcastle-based make-up artist Isabella Crawford secretly flew to Turkey in February after contacting a popular plastic surgeon who advised her to have a ‘mummy makeover’, which included a tummy tuck, breast enlargement, Brazilian buttock augmentation and liposuction, despite the fact that she had no children.
Isabella told ITV she had low self-confidence and wanted to ‘try and improve myself’ after being influenced by the many online adverts she received for cosmetic surgery abroad.
“It wasn’t about the image I wanted to project, I just felt so bad inside,” she said.
“I thought if I went somewhere I would be happy because that’s what they tell you on social media.”
20-year-old Newcastle make-up artist Isabella Crawford said she suffered complications following cosmetic surgery in Turkey earlier this year
Isabella says she woke up to find she was disfigured from a botched surgery
Isabella remembers waking up after her surgery with surgical wounds
After contacting the anonymous surgeon, she said he recommended “a pretty significant operation for a 20-year-old girl.”
“I said to myself, he knows what he’s doing,” adding, “I was just very naive and trusted him.”
Isabella was put to bed at 9:00 and not returned to her room until early evening.
“I don’t know where I went, who touched us, or what happened.”
But Isabella woke up to find that she had been disfigured by a botched operation.
She remembers waking up with surgical wounds and several bags attached to her body that were filling with blood.
“I was black and blue,” she said, adding that she felt it was “an experiment to see how far the body can be pushed.”
Just a few days after her surgery, Isabella flew back to the UK and said she spent the entire flight sitting in the toilet as blood and fluid poured from her open wounds.
“I thought, I’m going to die on this flight,” she said.
When she got home, Isabella’s mother, thinking she was on a girls’ trip, rushed her to the hospital, where she was treated for a rare flesh-eating bacteria and serious open wounds.
“The nurses on the ward couldn’t believe that someone would perform so many operations at once,” Isabella recalls.
“I was black and blue,” she said, adding that she felt it was “an experiment to see how far the body can be pushed.”
Isabella had several bags attached to her body that filled with blood
But despite Isabella wanting to change her appearance, she now regrets going to such extremes to ‘feel better about herself’.
“Please don’t fall for it. There’s so much more to life than being pretty,” a tearful Isabella said.
Her story comes shortly after it was revealed yesterday that a British woman is currently stuck in Turkey after suffering serious complications from botched cosmetic procedures, including two bouts of sepsis.
28-year-old mother of one Cennet Lo flew to Bodrum in April to undergo a tummy tuck, liposuction and a Brazilian butt lift.
Four months later, she is still recovering in Turkey from a cosmetic procedure that went dramatically wrong.
Since she first went under the knife a few months ago, Lo has had to undergo four major surgeries to clear up skin infections.
But even the corrective surgeries cause problems for Lo.
Isabella now regrets going to extremes to ‘feel better about myself’
She claimed that after developing sepsis for the second time, she underwent surgery to close the open wound, only to wake up to find that her surgeon had performed a completely new tummy tuck without her consent.
She also recalled having dead tissue removed from a wound without anesthesia.
The number of complications from cosmetic procedures is increasing in Turkey, as these types of procedures are generally significantly cheaper than in some Western countries.
According to the British Foreign Office, 28 Britons have died after undergoing cosmetic surgery in Turkey since 2019.
Meanwhile, the number of people requiring hospital treatment in the UK after cosmetic surgery abroad has risen by 94 per cent in three years – from 57 in 2020 to 111 in 2022, with 124 cases so far this year – according to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), with procedures performed in Turkey accounting for more than three-quarters of procedures in the past six months alone.