A Colombian man’s face is reportedly rotting following botched cheek plumping surgery by a fake doctor.
Jerson Trujillo, 28, went under the knife in his quest to look like a woman – but the procedure went hideously wrong.
He has been left with a heavily disfigured face, instead of the feminine look he desired. Reports suggest he has just 50 per cent of the face he began with left.
His face broke out in granulomas – groupings of immune cells that gather to try to wall off a foreign substance in the body that cannot be eliminated.
Mr Trujillo, from Neiva, has undergone four painful operations to try to repair the damage caused by the fake doctor. Two more are scheduled.
Speaking for the first time since his ordeal four years ago, he told local reporters: ‘Naively, I was not aware of what they had put in my body.
‘My face was destroyed, rotten, pus came out.’ Mr Trujillo added that his face had became ‘red’ and ‘hot’ after being injected with a mysterious liquid.
Jerson Trujillo, 28, went under the knife in his quest to look like a woman – but the procedure went hideously wrong. He has been left with a heavily disfigured face instead of the feminine look he so longingly desired
The fake doctor, who is believed to be on the run, told Mr Trujillo that she would inject his cheekbones to make them plumper.
When the problems began
Problems didn’t arise until a week later when he went for a moisturising treatment.
The moisturiser reacted badly with the substance that had been injected into his cheeks, local reports state.
Three months after the moisturising treatment, he began to suffer symptoms.
Mr Trujillo, from Neiva, has undergone four painful operations to try to repair the damage caused by the fake doctor
Speaking for the first time since his ordeal four years ago, he told local reporters: ‘Naively, I was not aware of what they had put in my body’
His face broke out in granulomas – groupings of immune cells that gather to try to wall off a foreign substance in the body that cannot be eliminated.
Reports claim he has just 50 per cent of the face he began with left, following the corrective operations he has endured.
Mr Trujillo is scheduled in for two further procedures to rebuild his face.
Is the doctor on the run?
There has been no word on whether the fake doctor who performed the original procedure has been tracked down or prosecuted.
Health officials have since issued a warning, stating prospective patients to always look for a qualified plastic surgeon and not to become the ‘body of crime’.
The Colombian Institute of Legal Medicine says 13 people died as a direct result of cosmetic surgery procedures in 2015 and 30 in 2016.