I went to Turkey for a BBL – I genuinely thought I was going to die

Dani Gratton was only 21 when she decided to fly to Turkey alone for the cosmetic procedure she so desperately wanted.

The OnlyFans and Playboy trans model was convinced that a combined BBL, tummy tuck and jaw lipo would give her the body she desperately wanted.

But she told MailOnline that she had no idea of ​​the horrors she would face.

Her ‘nightmarish’ experience left her in fear for her life. Seeing bodies cut open before her eyes and the screams of patients begging for death will haunt her forever.

Dani, now 23, said she acknowledges she was ‘gambling with her life’ by paying just £5,000 in cash for the trio of Istanbul surgeries.

Image too gruesome for MailOnline to publish, show Dani holding a collection bag filled with blood attached to her newly constructed behind after being left alone in her five-star hotel after surgery.

The ordeal didn’t end there, with the adult star recalling how upon returning to the UK some of her stitches burst. She was even afraid that her belly button would fall off because of the extent of the infection that had developed.

Dani had always wanted cosmetic surgery. But after getting body-shamed after performing on an MTV show, her need was upgraded to a pressing need.

“There were already things I knew I wanted to fix on my body,” she said.

“But on a scale of thousands of people making horrible comments about me, I felt like I really needed to hurry.

“I thought, ‘I need to find myself somewhere now and book it ASAP.'”

As BBLs were largely not offered in the UK at the time, her only option was to go abroad.

She initially considered Miami, but the £13,000 cost of the BBL alone put her off.

Dani eventually found a clinic in Turkey that offered all three procedures for what seemed like a bargain, with the price including hotel accommodation, meals, and VIP transportation.

In one quick Instagram message, she contacted a clinic in Istanbul who asked her to send pictures of her body and provide details about her weight and whether she smoked.

Dani was cleared for surgery almost immediately and was booked for the massive surgery just five days after originally contacting the clinic.

Arriving in Turkey the night before her surgery, Dani, originally from Uxbridge, North London, was greeted in a ‘flashy’ VIP limousine and taken to her five-star accommodation.

It was only there, talking to her parents, that the seriousness of what she was about to go through finally dawned on her.

“I called my parents and I cried my eyes out, I was so scared,” she said.

“Reality really hit at that point.

“My dad was on the phone ‘Just come home, book a flight and come home’.”

But with the comments of those body-shaming trolls running through her mind, she remained determined to keep going.

Another reality check came on the day of the procedure itself, when Dani handed over a “literal book” of forms to sign.

Each page listed a possible side effect or complication for which she was legally required to accept the risk, and there was a key phrase that appeared on many of them.

“Every complication said ‘could result in death’, ‘could result in death’ and I had to sign them off,” she said.

Then came the main event and Dani was wheeled off for her eight hour ordeal.

Lying on a gurney, she saw something she says she will remember for the rest of her life—half a dozen rooms, each filled with a woman being cut open for some sort of enhancement or augmentation.

“There were no curtains or blinds or anything,” she said.

“I saw people lying on the table in the middle of the operation and being cut open.

“They ripped open this woman’s breasts to push in the breast implants.

“It felt dodgy… and I just focused on myself and hoped I could survive this.

“I really thought I was going to die.”

She was under anesthesia and woke up in the waiting room, freezing cold from lying naked in the operating room for so long, along with two other women she had met earlier when she was picked up by the clinic.

While one was cold, the other was wide awake and in so much pain that she screamed and even begged for death.

Dani recalled, “She yelled, ‘I’m in pain, I want to die, I want to die'”.

She wouldn’t see her again.

The experience was so terrifying that Dani initially suspected it had all been a nightmare, but the nurse caring for her confirmed it was real.

After the surgery, Dani stayed in the hospital for a few nights, but said she felt rushed to leave the clinic.

“I really wanted to spend more time in the hospital, but they told me it would cost me extra,” she said.

When she returned to her hotel alone and, in her own words, “left to fend for herself,” she recalls fearing what might happen to all the cables attached to her body, especially a collection bag caught between the buttocks of her new BBL.

“It was horrible,” she said.

“I didn’t want to be left alone with this thing in my body.”

While the clinic did send nurses to check her in, they were only available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., otherwise she was on her own.

She recalled how one night she dropped her painkillers and, physically unable to pick them up, was forced to spend a night in restless agony until help arrived the next morning.

Dani was now five days into her recovery, but her hotel stay, included as part of her package, was coming to an end

“I wasn’t ready to go home yet,” she said.

She described the experience as being in a revolving door, with her recovery scheduled according to the clinic’s schedule, not her own.

“It’s so crazy how spicy everything is,” she said.

“You don’t have a minute to catch your breath, it goes so fast.”

The flight was uneventful and she returned home in the care of her parents.

But her problems didn’t stop there.

Like many others who returned from Turkey, she experienced post-operative problems that required medical attention.

A suture in her right hip burst causing fluid to leak out and even to this day she has a little dip in that area compared to her left side.

Her belly button also started to turn green and ‘gunk’ and at one point she was afraid it might even fall off.

Fortunately, she is now fully recovered, navel and all, with no lingering health problems.

The ordeal hasn’t stopped her from having cosmetic surgery in the UK, an experience she says was markedly different.

‘I had a breast augmentation in the UK, and it was completely different. I was in my own separate room and the windows were covered and I felt comfortable,” she said.

Dani said she would never forget her experience and urged anyone thinking of following in her footsteps to not do what she did and travel alone.

She also urged people to keep in mind that the pictures they see on social media of cosmetic surgery success only show the finished product, not the ordeal and risk of getting it.

“It’s so easy to see those photos on social media of women posting after surgery and you think, ‘Oh my God, I want to look like this’… without even knowing about the process,” she said.