'My quest for the perfect bottom left me with NO LIMBS': Mother's botched black market injections led to quadruple amputation

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• Apryl Michelle Brown, 46, mother-of-two and hair stylist from LA
• Had silicone injections in buttocks, but it was actually bathroom sealant
• For five years had constant pain 'like toothache, labour and migraine'
• Was given 24 hours to live by doctors and put into induced coma
• Awoke after two months to find she had no hands, feet or buttocks
• Had had 27 operations to rectify damage and save her life
• Appeared on ITV's This Morning to warn women against injections

Forty-six-year-old Apryl, who lives in Los Angeles, endured black-market silicone injections that a surgeon later identified as nothing more than bathroom sealant

A mother-of-two whose quest for the perfect bottom led to a quadruple limb and buttock amputation has warned other women against black market silicone injections.

Hair stylist Apryl Michelle Brown, from LA, spent five years in excruciating pain when an unlicensed practitioner injected her buttocks with bathroom sealant, telling her it was silicone, in order to enhance them.

Doctors had no idea how to treat the botched implants and told her she might have to live with the agony, but when they finally operated the injections became so badly infection she was induced into a coma. 

It was only when she awoke two months later that Apryl, now 46, discovered the lengths medical staff had gone to to keep her alive.

Speaking on to Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langford ITV's This Morning via satellite link, Apryl explained that as a child she had been teased for having a 'flat butt' and developed a complex, so when a woman came into her salon in 2004 saying she had had silicone injections, Apryl thought she had been 'sent from God'.

She said: 'I thought she was a blessing. I hadn't done any other research so I didn't know all the horror stories. I went to someone's private home - she wasn't licensed, but I didn't know that then - and lay on her daughter's bed, wearing special panties with the butt removed.

'She told me I'd need four sets of injections, and when she started to do them it was very painful. I could feel it going into my nerves and muscles.'

The pain did subside, and Apryl returned for a second lot of injections. It was as she left the house the second time that she had 'an epiphany'.

'I thought, what are you doing? And that was a sign from God to stop.'

Soon after, things began to go dramatically wrong.

First the area around the injections began to discolour, then become itchy, then incredibly painful, described by Apryl as 'like a toothache, labour pain and a migraine'.

She sought medical advice and the general consensus was that doctors had no idea what to do. Most told her the chemical could not be removed and that she would have to live with the pain.

'Eventually they went in and removed the silicone, along with the butt cheeks,' said Apryl. 'It was then it became infected and they gave me 24 hours to live. I remember feeling relieved when I heard that.'

Doctors induced Apryl into a coma and carried out 27 operations, including a buttock amputation and a quadruple lower arm and lower leg amputation. 'I didn't know this until I came around,' she said. 'When I woke up I had no butt and I wasn't in pain anymore.'

Apryl, who recently completed a three-mile walk, 10-mile cycle and 150m swim for charity, said she wishes to use the experience to teach other women about the dangers of vanity.

She said: 'I don't think God gives you opportunity to live again without using it to stop others. I want to teach that we mustn't ever look for something outside ourselves to validate ourselves.

'We're already born whole and perfect and complete, and nothing we do on the outside will make us change on the inside. 

'When I got the injections I already had great self esteem. I thought I was just enhancing myself. But looking back, I see there must have been an extreme issue.'

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