“He doesn’t look like me anymore”
Evangelista appears after ‘terrifying surgery’
02/16/2022 at 10:14 PM
‘Forever disfigured’ is how former model Linda Evangelista describes her body after suffering a rare side effect from plastic surgery. She is now appearing in public for the first time and describes her struggle from life in secret.
In September 2021, former model Linda Evangelista first revealed that she is “permanently disfigured” due to the rare side effects of a cosmetic procedure. More: The “distortion” made her “depressed” and finally “hermit,” as Evangelista wrote on Instagram at the time. The 56-year-old describes her physical and psychological suffering in detail as People magazine cover star And he wants to fight his way back to life: “I can’t live like this anymore, in secret and in shame. I can’t live with this pain anymore. I’m ready to finally talk about it.”
Now she’s showing off her body for the first time with the photos that People publish in its latest issue. Three months into the treatment, she noticed swelling on her chin, hip, and chest. So the areas that “wanted to shrink all of a sudden grew and stiffened. Then they got numb.”
“I tried to fix it myself,” Evangelista recalls in 2015. “I thought I did something wrong. I got to a point where I didn’t eat at all. I thought I was losing my mind.” It was only in 2016 that she dared to see her doctor, who finally diagnosed her with paradoxical hyperplasia (PAH). This is a side effect that can occur in less than one percent of cases with the non-surgical fat freezing procedure that Evangelista also underwent. The tissue volume in the treated area increases instead of decreasing.
Don’t look in the mirror anymore
“He told me that no diet, no matter how strict, and no amount of training, no matter how hard, could make up for it,” was the bad news from Evangelista’s doctor. Since then, she’s also had traditional liposuction, she reveals. But even after the second intervention in 2017, the problem did not disappear, on the contrary. You are still unable to move without compression garments because the affected areas may become sore.
According to the report, she sued the company’s parent company where she performed the surgery for $50 million. Also because she hasn’t been able to do her job as a model since and after that didn’t feel like she was aware enough of the potential side effects. The other side contradicts this claim. Evangelista revealed in tears to “People,” “I loved being on the stage. Now I’m afraid to meet people who know me.” She herself no longer looks in the mirror – “she no longer looks like me.” However, with her story now public, she wants to “help other people who are in the same situation as me. That is my goal.”