Lady remembers botched Mexico surgical procedure as thriller surrounds ‘tummy tuck’ 4
A US lady is detailing her harrowing expertise with Mexican medical tourism to warn others of the hazards after 4 People had been kidnapped whereas allegedly en path to a beauty process within the nation.
Justine Rodriguez told Fox News Digital this week that she felt “determined” when she determined to bear bariatric surgical procedure in Tijuana in 2016.
The Idaho resident, 37, stated her insurance coverage wouldn’t cowl the load loss process, so she opted to journey south of the border, the place it value $5,000.
The expertise, nonetheless, shortly devolved right into a disaster when Rodriguez skilled critical issues.
“My lungs collapsed. My kidneys and my liver had been going. The an infection went to my mind,” she advised the outlet.
{A photograph} of Rodriguez from shortly after the surgical procedure exhibits Rodriguez unconscious in a hospital mattress with electrodes pinned to her head and oxygen below her nostrils.
Trying again, Rodriguez stated the choice to journey exterior of the US for a significant operation was “in all probability the worst selection I ever made in my life.”
The risks of medical tourism are more and more below a microscope in current weeks after two Americans were killed following a brutal, broad-daylight kidnapping simply over the Texas border in Matamoros earlier this month.
Within the days after the kidnapping, kinfolk of the childhood mates stated the foursome traveled to Mexico in order that survivor Latavia “Tay” McGee might bear a tummy tuck process.
Josef Woodman, CEO of the medical tourism guidebook Sufferers Past Borders, says each she and Rodriguez are among the many droves of People drawn to different international locations to obtain cheaper remedies.
“Pre-pandemic, some 1.2 million Americans traveled to Mexico for elective medical therapy,” Woodman told NPR last week.
Sufferers, he continued, largely journey for beauty procedures and dental work, as a result of they’ll “save 50-70% over what they might pay in the USA for an elective therapy.”
However whereas potential sufferers ought to vet their medical groups, Woodman additionally advised Fox that insisted that border crossings have by no means been a problem.
“We bought used to sufferers being just about 100% secure once they crossed the border, even into harmful territories,” he stated.
Rodriguez, nonetheless, argued that the dangers outweigh the potential advantages.
“The cash isn’t price it,” she stated. “It’s not price your life.”
Rodriguez’s warnings echo that of Shannyn Palmer, a 36-year-old mother of three whose botched “mommy makeover” in Tijuana resulted in two of her fingers being amputation.
“Should you’re going to do a beauty process, keep within the US as a result of going by way of the courts might be loads simpler and if something does go flawed, you’ll have entry to your surgeon right here,” she told The Post.
“I’m completely disfigured for the remainder of my life.”