After full-body liposuction, I barely survived thanks to emergency surgery.
In September 2023, I underwent full-body liposuction. It was not all suctioned in one session; the front and back were divided and done over separate sessions.
My condition felt abnormal immediately after surgery. Dragging my painful body, I took one photo and lay down. While still fasting, as soon as I had a few spoonfuls of seaweed soup, I vomited, and after that my bowel movements stopped completely. From the next day on, I could not eat anything.
Because I had undergone liposuction before, I was prepared to tolerate a certain amount of pain, but this was different. Even while taking three days’ worth of the narcotic painkillers prescribed by the hospital, the pain was so severe that I had to take more than 10 to 20 extra pills a day.
But when I contacted the hospital, the answer I got was: “It is supposed to hurt.”
After finishing the three days’ worth of painkillers, I took more than 20 regular painkillers, but the pain would not lessen at all, and in the end I was taken to the emergency room.
At around 10 p.m., X-rays and a CT scan were taken, and a specialist diagnosed me with sepsis. They said there were two perforations in my small intestine, the intestinal contents had spread into the abdominal cavity, and I had peritonitis and a systemic infection.
Because intestinal contents kept leaking, my small intestine became necrotic, the peritoneum had deteriorated, and the infection had even spread into my blood.
At midnight that night, I underwent an approximately 25 cm open abdominal surgery. I had five drainage bags attached in my abdominal cavity and received inpatient treatment at a university hospital for more than a month.
Since then, I have been going to dermatology and even psychiatry for scar treatment.
Several medical professionals have said the same thing: “The fascia and the fat layer feel completely different. They absolutely cannot be confused.”
After hearing that, I could not help but be suspicious. Was the person who performed the surgery truly a qualified doctor?
It is not as if the results on other areas are good, either. My arms and thighs are all uneven and lumpy.
I suspect it may have been proxy surgery, or a “shadow doctor.” (This is my personal suspicion.)
But the hospital says: “We cannot know what happened outside the hospital during the three days after surgery. The small intestine may have been perforated during that time.”
I am a healthy woman in my 30s. The surgery proceeded after preoperative blood tests, and nothing showed up in the blood tests. Even in a health checkup done just a few months earlier, I was in good health with no abnormalities. I do not think it is plausible for a healthy woman in her 30s to develop two small-intestinal perforations within three days of liposuction without any external trauma at all.
Or did they proceed even though there was an abnormality after the blood test? Whatever the case, it was an accident.
When I visited a university hospital for an evaluation during the lawsuit, the professor there also expressed sympathy and said that a scar like this on the abdomen can improve a little no matter how many surgeries or procedures are done, but it cannot disappear.
Immediately after I was transferred from the intensive care unit at the university hospital to a general ward, I filed a medical lawsuit.
Currently, in the criminal trial, the doctor in charge has been found guilty of professional negligence resulting in injury and was sentenced to a fine of 5 million KRW. The civil lawsuit is still ongoing.
I am still recovering.
Please do not ever think of liposuction lightly.