Ever thought about getting lip injections? Welp, hold on to your sanity, because today’s OMG-worthy news comes to you from the U.K., where one woman is dealing with the aftermath of lip injections that caused her lips to swell up five times their normal size after accidentally getting them injected into an artery.
The 29-year-old woman, Rachael Knappier, was at a Botox party (yes, a Botox party is exactly what it sounds like) at her friend’s house back in August when she decided to try lip injections, courtesy of the party’s hired beautician.
But rather than injecting a bit of filler into Knappier’s lip tissue as is standard practice, Knappier says the beautician injected filler into an artery, causing her lips to massively swell and cut off circulation to the tissue.
“She told me I was having an allergic reaction, but when I got to the hospital, they told me straight away I was not, and that the filler had been administered incorrectly,” Knappier tells Cosmopolitan. “Left untreated, it would have led to necrosis, which is the death of the soft tissue of your lip—something that’s irreversible.”
Knappier says she required multiple emergency surgeries to fix the botched injection from someone who she believed was a licensed professional. "The beautician, who I assumed at the time was a nurse, didn’t ask me to sign any consent forms, so alarm bells should have rung,” she said in an interview with The Sun. “But being at a party with friends took away all the seriousness of having filler injected into my face.”
It took almost two weeks for the swelling in Knappier's lips to finally subside, but thankfully, three months after the hellish experience, she says she’s “back to normal,” though “it could have very easily been a different story for me.”
Now, she’s just trying to live her life and help others avoid the same situation. “I am trying to raise awareness of the dangers of using non-medically qualified people to administer Botox and fillers,” she says.
“It is such an unregulated industry in the UK, and I didn’t even know that non-medics could do this,” she adds. “People need to do thorough research on the people they allow to carry out these procedures.”
The easiest way to do that? Get yourself to a board-certified dermatologist, and think twice next time (if ever) someone in your friend’s living room offers to inject your face with something.
Chloe Metzger is the deputy beauty director at Cosmopolitan, overseeing the editorial content and growth strategy of the hair, makeup, and skin space on digital, while also obsessively writing about the best hair products for every hair type (curly girl here; whattup), and the skincare routines that really, truly work (follow her on Instagram to see behind-the-scenes pics of that magazine life). She brings nearly a decade of writing and editing expertise, and her work has appeared in Allure, Health, Fitness, Marie Claire, StyleCaster, and Parents. She also has an unhealthy adoration for Tom Hanks and would like to please meet him one day, if you could arrange that. Thanks.
