the NOT SO FANTASTIC PLASTIC

Half a million cosmetic surgeries are performed each year in Australia, but the lack of regulation has seen procedures botched and patients maimed. Change is afoot, however it's too little too late for many Tracey Withers reports

- Tracey Withers

Emma* was feeling upbeat the day she checked into the shiny private hospital in Sydney for breast surgery. A law student, 26, she'd previously had a reduction to relieve chronic back pain and feel easier in her petite frame. Now a different doctor, who she'd heard about from friends, was going to give her some subtle shape.

"I was very specific about wanting natural lift and upper volume," explains Emma. Her surgeon was confident and reassuring throughout the consultation in his upscale office; he'd done a lot of cases like hers. "He said, 'This is what you want and I can promise you this is what you will get.'" 

But what Emma got was mangled "boulders" and a "nightmare" that would last for six months. "I was in pain 24/7; I couldn't sit at my desk to work," she recalls. "Mentally I was so unhappy I didn't want my partner to look at me. I didn't leave the house."

Emma's doctor never appeared at follow-up appointments in the weeks after surgery. "I had the receptionist checking me, telling me the pain was normal," she says. But Emma kept sending photos and insisting something was very wrong, and the surgeon eventually offered a deal: he gave Emma a refund and she signed a non-disclosure agreement. "I could either take the money and find someone to fix this or let him have a go and maybe make another mistake."

The refund doesn't come close to covering the cost of the multiple corrective surgeries Emma has ultimately needed. "I've spent almost $20,000 fixing his mistakes and that's not even the end of it," she says.

The plastic surgeon now handling Emma's revision surgery confirmed she wasn't just having "complications". In fact, "He explained that a professional would never have offered me implants at all," she says.