2023-12-17 13:00:00
Implants lowered into the rib cage or sewn with the skin, redraping unfinished breast: three women who spent tens of thousands of dollars with the same surgeon end up with one result botché. As recourse is almost non-existent, they want to educate women to choose the person who will modify their body.
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Its implants sewn to the skin
After having two children, Stéphanie Pelletier knew she wanted to undergo breast augmentation and breast lift, the latter procedure involving lifting sagging breasts.
After some research to choose her surgeon, she went under the knife in September 2022. At the same time, she made the last payment. It was at the post-op follow-up, two days later, that things started to turn sour, she says.
She explains in particular that she received no assistance from the clinic when her scars became infected following the operation. It was a nurse friend who helped her.
“At first he was nice, friendly, he answered my emails almost instantly. Then, I paid, I had my operation and already when I woke up, I didn’t feel very well,” recounts Stéphanie Pelletier, in an interview with 24 hours.
When her breasts went down in the following weeks, she realized that her lift “had only been a quarter of the way done”.
“I had so much skin left that when I went to bed, my breasts came up to the side of my armpits,” says Stéphanie.
Even if she had “decided to accept [son] comes out,” the 28-year-old woman finally found another surgeon who agreed to correct her breast lift and augmentation following eight months of searching. The latter noticed, on the operating table, that his implants had been sewn to the skin and that they were ruptured.
“For that, I’m a little happy, because the implants are under warranty. For my experience, I found it horrible, but at least I don’t lose everything,” concedes the woman who paid more than $30,000 for her two surgeries.
Worthy of the show Botched
Marie-Christine Bourgeois, aged 40, had undergone a first breast augmentation 17 years ago with the same surgeon whose private clinic is located in Montreal.
The first surgery having gone well, she returned to see him in 2021 following giving birth to her children. She underwent a breast lift, a breast augmentation with the implants placed under the muscles and an abdominoplasty, which involves removing excess skin and fat from the abdomen.
This time, the results are nightmare-inducing.
Very soon following the operation, she realized that her implants were too high compared to her nipples. The surgeon, who assured him that the surgery had been done well, agreed to correct the situation, in exchange for new costs.
“When I woke up, that’s when I knew I had a big, big, big problem,” says Marie-Christine. My breasts were too low, deformed. I had two holes in the bottom of my breasts. The pain was incredible and it never came back.”
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Both operations left her with a lot of pain. The descent of his implants, now in his ribcage, causes him neck pain in particular.
“I went to five doctors, and all five told me they had never seen a case like mine. Nobody wanted to touch me,” she says.
She even explains that she signed up, unsuccessfully, for American reality TV Botched (Botched surgery), in which two surgeons correct botched plastic surgeries.
Marie-Christine finally found a surgeon who does breast reconstructions “for doctors who have botched their clients” and who agrees to help her. His operation will take place in early January.
The total bill for his three surgeries – the first two with the same surgeon and the correction – came to $43,000.
“We pay to feel better, but in the end, it’s worse”
Marie-Ève Foisy had two pregnancies close together, which left her with “breasts emptied like [ceux] of a grandmother.
She therefore made an appointment with the same surgeon in the Montreal region for a consultation, which was expeditious. “I should have lit up at that point, but he seemed to know his stuff,” she says.
She underwent a breast lift and augmentation in May 2022. Everything went well until the time to remove her dressings.
“I was so excited to see the result. I told myself that I was going to regain the self-confidence that I had lost. But when [le chirurgien] showed me that, I said to myself “Oh my god, it’s so not pretty!”. I saw that my nipples were completely scrapped. They were really asymmetrical,” she recalls.
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When she expressed her displeasure, the surgeon brushed it aside. “It was always our body that was wrong, never [le travail] what he had done,” laments the 24-year-old woman.
“We pay for surgery to feel better regarding our body and in the end, we feel worse than when we started,” she adds.
Just like Stéphanie and Marie-Christine, Marie-Ève will undergo a correction of her breast lift and breast augmentation. “The second surgeon I chose, he often repeats the jobs “botched” from this surgeon,” she says.
In total, she will have paid more than $30,000 for her surgeries. “It’s the price of a tank,” she laments.
Find yourself using Facebook
It was on a Facebook group of around fifteen women who had had botched procedures by this same surgeon that the three women met.
Stéphanie Pelletier recently published a TikTok video to educate Quebecers who wish to go on the operating table to choose their surgeon carefully. Since the broadcast of her video, which has more than 243,000 views, she claims to have received hundreds of testimonials from women, several of which concerned the same surgeon as her.
Stéphanie, Marie-Christine and Marie-Ève do not want to name the surgeon, for fear of reprisals. 24 hours was able to confirm his identity.
Photo Fotolia
Advice before going under the knife
1- Do your research
“Honestly, I didn’t do much research, I knew who I wanted to have the operation with. It’s been a long time since I saw it on social networks, in publications from content creators who had gone to see it and for whom it went well,” explains Stéphanie Pelletier.
“Don’t let yourself be influenced by influencers – it’s their job», adds Marie-Ève Foisy.
They suggest browsing Facebook groups, calling for testimonials by mentioning the name of the surgeon you are interested in, reading comments left on RateMD and looking at “before and following” photos of the surgeon’s work.
2- Consult more than one surgeon
“Even if a consultation is expensive, it’s worth it,” insists Marie-Christine Bourgeois.
It’s even better if someone is present to take notes, she continues. “It has to click. If it doesn’t click, we move on to the next one. And you have to follow your intuition.”
“Don’t go for the first surgeon that comes your way. It’s important to choose the right person, because it’s your body, following all,” summarizes Stéphanie Pelletier.
3- Don’t look for the best deal
The quality of work and experience have a price, recalls Stéphanie.
What are the remedies for botched plastic surgery?
It is very difficult for a person who judges that their plastic surgery was unsuccessful to obtain compensation.
Stéphanie, Marie-Christine and Marie-Ève learned this the hard way. They and other women in the Facebook group consulted lawyers, who told them they had little chance of obtaining compensation.
“It will always be my word once morest a surgeon’s. It’s much more of a waste of money than what it can bring us. At the point where I have reached, I want to move on to something else,” summarizes Stéphanie Pelletier.
A feeling shared by the other two women.
You should know that doctors have an obligation of means, not an obligation of results.
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This means that the surgeon “is required to use quality means, considered reasonable by his peers in a given care context, but he is not required to guarantee the final result of the intervention,” writes the Quebec Action Network for Women’s Health (RQASF) on its website.
But as plastic surgeries are non-medically required care, the surgeon has an obligation to provide information. The doctor must detail the risks of the procedure, the expected benefits, the possible medical alternatives and the nature of the care that will be given, writes the JuriGo platform on its website.
In light of this information, there must be free and informed consent.
A patient who would like to file a lawsuit would first have to prove that medical malpractice was committed by determining whether another doctor placed in the same circumstances would have acted in the same way, indicates the Lambert lawyers firm in a post. Lack of consent or forgetting an instrument in the patient’s body are examples of misconduct.
It is also necessary to prove that harm has been suffered as a result of the fault, such as permanent following-effects.
Finally, it is necessary to link the fault to the damage by establishing the causal link.
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