With all the plastic surgery nightmare stories circulating around the web, you'd think the dangers would be self-evident by now, and people would be cautious as to who is performing their surgery.But the recent arrest of an Ontario woman reveals that many people are still risking their lives by submitting to surgical procedures at the hands of unqualified practitioners.The Toronto Sun reports that police charged Marilyn Ely Reid with criminal negligence causing bodily harm last week after a 28-year-old woman suffered debilitating side effects from a series of Reid-administered butt injections last August.Police say the woman felt ill with a high fever immediately afterward, and three days later she'd deteriorated to the point where she required hospitalization.ER. "She was treated for several days with antibiotics but the woman's condition continued to deteriorate and she received surgery," Toronto Police Det. Louise Farrugia tells reporters, adding that the surgery was necessary to remove the substance from her rear. Although the woman is expected to make improvement over time, Farrugia says that she can "barely walk," is still hooked up to IV and has trouble sitting down.Reid -- who shilled her injectable wares on the website pmmainjection.com -- advertised "lip, muscle and buttock injections" and would meet her clients at their private homes or hotel rooms.As the National Post notes, PMMA stands for polymethyl methacrylate, and it's an expensive thermoplastic once commonly used as bone cement in cosmetic surgery procedures. By the 90s, PMMA got mixed with bovine collagen to create a long-term injectable that helped kick off the Botox craze.
The problem, as Julie Khanna of The Institute of Cosmetic & Laser Surgery tells the Post, is that the product was easy for unlicensed people to get their hands on. "People are downplaying these injectables — 'Oh yeah, your hairdresser can do it for you, anyone can do it for you.' And that's pretty scary to me," she says.
