Laure no longer dares to look at her new body in the mirror. “It’s awful. My body is ugly, I cry regarding it every day”lets go of the 50-year-old via the orange Alert us button.
Last July, Laure embarked on the operation which, she thought, would change her life. It all starts on Instagram where she spends a lot of her free time. “I saw photos of super perfect influencers”, she recalls. On the social network, she discovers the bodies of many women of whom she sees no fault. Becoming like them then becomes his main objective.
Clinics claiming to be experts in cosmetic surgery promote themselves on the social network. With “before/following” photos, they praise the merits of professionals who describe themselves as medical surgeons. Many of these establishments are located abroad. Laure spots one in Tunisia. “I’m a single person. I don’t work, I have no friends, I’m a homebody. So seeing all these beautiful photos, I cracked up and sent a message”, she confides to us.
He made lines on my belly and on my thighs
At 54, Laure hopes to regain the “thin size of her 30s”. “I was tired of always wearing L”, she remembers, in tears.
She begins a conversation with a manager of the medical establishment located in Tunis. On request, she sends photos of her body via WhatsApp. “I sent pictures of me in my underwear showing my stomach,” she explains. He is promised that an operation is possible.
“I bought my plane ticket, I went to Gosselies airport and then I went to the clinic. There, they made me sit in a small room before putting me up in a bedroom”, she explains. She spends the night there. The next morning, the surgeon in charge of his operation visits him. “He explained to me the risks of the operation. I signed a discharge paper. Then he made lines on my stomach and on my thighs to show me what he was going to do”, says the 50-year-old. Before exclaiming: “But I didn’t understand anything. For me, that doesn’t mean anything.”
Why did I get such a terrible result? I’m disgusted, demoralized
Nurses then take her to the operating room. “They put the mask on me (the anesthesia mask, editor’s note). I mightn’t even count to 3 that I had fallen asleep”, she testifies.
Laure then wakes up in her hospital room. A jumpsuit covers his body. Thanks to the medication, she feels no pain. “I just had a lot of embarrassment to move around”, she reports. The doctor then visits him. This will be the second and last time she will have contact with the practitioner. “He tells me that everything went well, that he removed 4 liters of fat from me. And that it took time for me to recover”, she confides.
For a month, wearing a sheath is mandatory. “I had to do 24 lymphatic drainage sessions. After 3.4 months, my body deflated. I had lost two sizes of jeans”, she says. But the weeks pass and Laure does not see the expected results. “My skin was all wrinkled, my thighs all warped”she regrets.
A €2,000 operation “paid in cash”
Faced with this, she decides to contact the surgeon who operated on her. “But no one answers me”, she says. On the internet, looking for reviews of the medical establishment. And there is disappointment. She reads comments that echo what she has experienced. “I preferred my body before. Why did I have such an awful result? I’m disgusted, demoralized. I have nightmares”she reports.
The operation cost him €2,000, “paid in cash“. Not to mention the plane ticket and the medication that was prescribed to her. Today, Laure wants to warn regarding the dangers that cosmetic surgery can present when it is not supervised by professionals. “Girls, I want to make a call. Be careful. Just because you’re shown good results on social media doesn’t mean yours will be good. That’s what I thought to myself,” she concludes.
AVANT L’OPERATION
APRES L’OPERATION
What mistake might the surgeon who operated Laure have made? After consulting the various photos sent by our witness, Jean Hébrant, the president of the Belgian society of aesthetic medicine, notes that a “softer” technique should have been used. “The surgeon should have left a little fat under the skin to not have this completely crumpled look that this lady has. If we look at Laure’s skin, we must have immediately realized that this skin was fragile.”
Looking at the result of the intervention, Jean Hébrant says he is both “sad” and “worried”.
“It’s worrying and sad. It’s both at the same time. I’m sad for this woman because I think the solutions to return to a more aesthetic state are going to be complicated. The risk of going to foreign countries, and I don’t say that all doctors in foreign countries are bad, is not to choose a good doctor. You should know that a surgeon is not a specialist in everything. There are some who will be specialized in facelifts, d ‘others for the breasts,… Depending on each person’s references, it will be easier in a small country like ours to obtain a good address.’
The surgeon gives 4 main tips to follow to avoid unpleasant surprises as much as possible:
– Be careful in choosing a qualified doctor for the desired operation
– Perform a clinical examination to assess the feasibility of the operation
– You have the right to a period of reflection following having received information on the risks of surgery
– The doctor must follow his act. You have to be able to stay in contact with him so that he can possibly make a correction.
Jean Hébrant also warns once morest advertisements published on social networks.
“In Belgium, a 2011 law prohibits . The Belgian Society of Aesthetic Medicine ensures that its members do not do so. It is extremely bad because it provokes a demand. You also have to remain humble and honest. must have the courage to say no when he feels that the treatment is not suitable for his patient.”
What solutions for Laure following this operation? “There may be solutions with regenerative medicine. There may be a tightening effect on sagging skin. I would tell that person that there is hope, but more in surgery.”he points out.
Regarding the price of the operation carried out in Tunisia, he considers that it is a “very bad calculation”. “2000 euros? I don’t see a big difference with what is done in Belgium. It might be 2500, maximum 3000 here. I think it’s a bad calculation, especially given the disappointment. I think that the risks were not explained to him. On social networks, he only shows good cases. And for the surgeon, you are not going to refuse an intervention to someone who has traveled 1,000 or 2,000 km.”
What questions to ask before surgery?
Samuel Dubois, psychologist at CHU UCL Saint-Elisabeth in Namur, for its part, receives patients who wish to have cosmetic surgery, in particular to lose weight. Often, during his consultations, he asks the same questions to be sure that the people in front of him do not have the wrong objective.
“I often ask ‘What do you expect from this operation?’ I try to put that in perspective with, “Where are you at in your life at the moment?” Because very often, the obsession with weight, a chest or a belly, is the tip of the iceberg. There is often something wrong underneath. There is a problem of self-confidence, a tension in the couple, an unresolved family problem,…”
And to continue: “If they can’t fix that, patients will divert it by looking for a problem elsewhere. As a shrink, I’ll try to say ‘watch out’, asking if the problem is really belly size or rather a relationship problem with his parents, a sick child,…” When we don’t love ourselves for who we are, we will try to embellish the packaging to have the impression of… The risk in doing this type of intervention is to mistake the objective and believe that by having a smooth face, all the problems will disappear.”
The psychologist also mentions the important role played by social networks, which influenced Laure. “As people, in an increasingly difficult life, need to escape or to be recognized, they live by correspondence or in the illusion that if they please their followers on Instagram, they exist. C t is something very powerful in our society. There is a process of identification. In the same way that young boys identify with football stars, many young girls identify with an influencer for example. It’s a quest for recognition and idol-likeness in that case.”
Samuel Dubois also tries to reason with patients who would like other operations following a successful surgery.
“I see patients following an operation. The surgeons I work with send them to me for an evaluation, to be sure that the person is not going to become obsessed with her image. A lady who is going to be very happy with her beautiful breasts can – be wanting to redo other parts of the body. We want to avoid headlong rush and obsession with image. We try to make people aware that there is always a risk. We stay in cosmetic and reconstructive surgery. There has been a lot of progress, but there are still failures, very few, but still”, he concludes.
