Cosmetic surgery disaster: Woman almost lost her lip after having fillers

Cassidy Valentine is a YouTube vlogger with almost 300,000 subscribers. She tells Sky News what led her to try lip fillers and shares a warning for anyone who might be considering the same procedure:

“I've experienced depression and anxiety for a lot of my life.

It stemmed from being bullied in secondary school for my heart condition and my appearance.

Comfort eating resulted in weight gain, which made the bullying even worse.

Bullying was a very hard thing to go through and it has affected my self-esteem ever since.

The anxiety triggered supraventricular tachycardia attacks (a type of arrhythmia), which resulted in several heart surgeries.

Due to a home situation, I also developed PTSD.

I decided to vlog on YouTube about what was happening and to reach out to people who were being bullied and those who had health problems.

While doing YouTube I learned to love myself again, as that's what I was trying to preach to people - to not let bullies change you.

Over the last year I gained a lot of weight due to my depression. I wasn't leaving the house, I wasn't socialising. I wasn't me.

I spontaneously had the idea to get lip fillers.

As an influencer, you get called every name under the sun, so you have to have a strong backbone. I had developed this over time and really didn't care what people thought.

However, where I'd taken myself off social media due to my mental health, I didn't have the backbone I once had, as I wasn't in the right state of mind.

I'd never wanted cosmetic surgery before but I saw all these beautiful girls on social media and wanted to look like them.

I felt fed up with my appearance: I'd gained weight, my hair had fallen out due to alopecia and I decided to change something to see if it would make me feel better.

The company I contacted saw my YouTube channel and offered me the procedure for free. I refused because I didn't want to influence others to do this.

While I was having the procedure done, I said to myself: "What am I dong? I really don't need this." But the needle was already in.

In the hours after the procedure, my lips were swelling profusely. It had gone wrong.

I kept contacting the company but they brushed it off, suggesting I take an antihistamine - the wrong medical advice.

So I contacted a second clinic and sent them a video of my lips.

They rushed me in as an emergency and said they couldn't find a pulse in my lip.

My artery had been occluded and my lip was hours from falling off as it was dying.

If I hadn't contacted the second clinic, I would not have a top lip and I really don't know the effect that would have had on my mental health.

If anyone is considering having any of these procedures done, please do your research and go to doctors - not beauticians.

Do not copy influencers and people who they are promoting - usually it's just for free filler.

The first clinic tried to gag me and say that if I was making a video, they wouldn't give me the refund.

I told them that, if I didn't get the money back, so be it. I'd rather save someone from going through what I did.”

Source: news.sky.com

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