Mom disfigured after botched op.
Carol became a recluse after a botched cosmetic procedure left her grotesquely disfigured and unable to face the world
THE face that stared back at her from the mirror belonged to someone else, a hideously deformed stranger. It was the face of a person who needed sticky tape to keep her eyes open – an alien from outer space. But what Carol Bryan was looking at was her own reflection. A filler procedure gone horribly wrong had changed her features from delicate to deformed.
“I felt like a monster,” says Carol (54), a former model from Florida in the USA. “I wore hats, scarves and sunglasses all the time, hoping I’d someday be able to look in the mirror again and recognise myself.”
She was barely able to look at herself and pushed away her friends and loved ones. And for more than three years she hardly set a foot out of the door.
Her self-esteem took such a knock she considered taking her own life. “My forehead became so heavy it started to affect my ability to see,” she says. “I began to have to tape my eyes open to walk.
“I didn’t feel comfortable going out in public and I secluded myself from all my friends and family for three-and-a-half years.”
Her daughter, Sofia, who’s in her twenties, eventually decided enough was enough. She sent a heartfelt letter to hospitals around the country hoping someone would respond to her desperate plea. And someone did – plastic surgeon Dr Reza Jarrahy of the University of California in Los Angeles.
The result was an operation that could help Carol to get back some of her dignity. She’s since been under the knife several times and for the first time in six years is not only brave enough to leave the house, she recently appeared on popular talk show The Doctors to warn others.
“I want to make sure this didn’t happen to me in vain,” she says. “I’ll work tirelessly to not let this happen to anyone again.”
HER good looks opened many doors for her when she was growing up, Carol says. In fact, it used to be her source of income.
“I started modelling at the age of 16 and worked in the beauty industry. I had a beautiful daughter, a successful husband, and a loving and supportive family. From the outside looking in it must have seemed as if I had it all, but looking back now I see my life was lacking so much.”
In her twenties and thirties the blonde bombshell turned heads wherever she went. “I was attractive. I felt confident,” she says.
But eventually age caught up with her. “I started having botox in my thirties for the vertical lines between my eyes. It was amazing. It took years off my face,” she said on the TV show. Then her nightmare started. “In 2009, when I was 47, doctors told me that at my age I should try new fillers, ones that would fill in the volume lost in my forehead and cheekbones. I knew it
‘My forehead became so heavy it started to affect my ability to see’
was safe, but what I didn’t know is that certain fillers are meant only for certain areas. During my procedure, two fillers – one of which was silicone – were combined in the same syringe and injected into areas they shouldn’t have been.”
After the procedure there was bruising and swelling in her face. But she thought it was just the normal side-effect of the fillers. “You expect that, so you don’t get alarmed,” she explains. “But three months after the procedure I was terrified of what I looked like,” she reveals.
Operations to repair the damage only made her look worse. “I never wanted to look at myself,” she says. “I washed my face without looking. I brushed my hair without looking. I lived with a hat, a scarf and glasses on.”
She started living the life of a recluse, ignoring phone calls and emails and cutting herself off from loved ones. “I hid myself for more than three years.”
Finally daughter Sofia intervened. “I wasn’t able to look into her eyes for four years and I just knew she had a better quality of life than what she was living. I just felt she needed to be out in the world again.” She appeared in Carol’s bedroom and said that something had to be done. “Mom, this isn’t okay. It’s not going to get better. This is catastrophic. You can’t fix this on your own.”
Sofia took photos of her mother and sent them to hospitals around the country to plead for help. It was then that Dr Jarrahy, husband of actress Geena Davis, was spurred into action.
He immediately consulted with a group of doctors in the hope that they’d be able to help. Only one of them was up for the challenge: his colleague and one of America’s most distinguished microvascular surgeons, Dr J Brian Boyd.
In April that year Carol had the first operation on her forehead. By this time the fillers had hardened and started pulling at tissue and deforming her face. The operation left her blind in her right eye.
Still, Carol says, “there could have been worse complications, so ultimately I’m lucky to have lost only half my vision”.
The most painful operation was six months later when skin and tissue were taken from her back and grafted onto her forehead during a 17-hour op.
Every time she had to go under the knife it was agony. “The pain of the corrective procedures isn’t quite describable,” she says.
“I feel amazing today. I’m happy to be alive and probably in the best mental state I’ve ever known.”
SHE’LL never again go under the knife to try to turn back time.
Carol, these days the West Coast director of nonprofit organisation Face2Face Healing, which helps to create awareness of people struggling with disfigurement, realises now how dissatisfied she was back then. “I was lonely. I was weak. I was unhappy. I had no idea what my purpose was in life.”
She’s since realised what beauty really is and that inner beauty is so much more important than her outward appearance, she says.
“I used to be one of those people who’d look at people who were disfigured then look away. It was never in a disgusted way, but it would hurt my heart so I’d look away. Losing my own beauty, having to face the world this way, and having people look at me and find me offensive makes me want to make sure this never happens to anyone again.”