Apryl Brown remembers lying on the hospital bed as the doctor uttered those words. A sense of relief came over her.
“I didn’t think about losing my children. I didn’t think about leaving my mother,” she said. She thought instead of how death would feel. “Although I will be dead, I will not be in pain anymore.”
That searing pain came from an unimaginable source: a silicone filler, like the one Brown assumed plastic surgeons use daily. Hers was injected into her buttocks, with the hope of improving her appearance.
Brown never predicted the injections would land her here — dying in a hospital bed in June 2010.
Her body was shutting down from a staph infection that doctors said was connected to the silicone injections. Her limbs were curling and turning black, the visible signs of necrosis. Brown recalled seeing her hands in the hospital, thinking, “Oh, my God. I am going to lose my hands. I looked at my feet ,and they were dead, too.”
Doctors had no choice. To save Brown’s life, they amputated her hands, feet and the flesh around her buttocks and hips in 27 surgeries. Somehow, she survived.
Brown is still embarrassed as she talks about the vanity that nearly cost her everything.
