Filler faux pas

‘I could either sit it out and look like a Happening Picasso…’

A couple of years ago I had quite a scare: I found hard nodules in my cheeks and mouth. My family doesn’t have a history of cancer, but I was terrified, and made an appointment to see my GP immediately. She also had no idea what they were, so she took a biopsy and sent it off to the lab.

I spent a long, sleepless night worrying about the results – but it turned out to be fillers I’d had injected about a month earlier! I wanted to get rid of the lines that run from my nose to my mouth and thought that was my best option: all my friends were doing it and they looked amazing. Plus, I’d gone to a really reputable doctor, so I certainly didn’t expect anything like this – I didn’t even know it was a possibility! I’ve since learnt that it wasn’t all that uncommon then (this was a couple of years ago now) because fillers weren’t regulated at all.

On top of that, there’s no predicting how your body will respond to them, or how quickly they’ll be broken down by your system. And my body clearly did not like them at all: they had shifted from where they were meant to be and instead of being slowly absorbed, had turned into hard little lumps. I had two options – I could either sit it out and look like a Happening Picasso while I waited for the filler to break down (which could have taken six months or longer), or I could have more injections to ‘neutralise’ the nodules. I chose the latter, even though I was really traumatised by then and had had more than enough of needles and doctors. It worked, but it has put me off cosmetic procedures for life.

I realise this is ridiculous, but one of the worst things for me was telling my husband the truth. I hadn’t told him about getting fillers because I knew he wouldn’t approve, but I obviously had to come clean afterwards. He was relieved, of course, but he’s never let me live it down!