US pensioner wakes up with unwanted breast implants and butt lift after surgery

Kimberly McCormick attended the Mexico Bariatric Center in Tijuana for discount skin-tightening surgery but ended up with breast augmentation and a butt lift that she had not requested.

“I called my daughter bawling, because I woke up with a huge breast, which if I live to be 500, I never would have wanted,” McCormick told anchor Natasha Zouves on US station NewsNation.

Ms McCormick had returned to the same clinic, one of the biggest medical tourism providers of bariatric surgery world, six years after undergoing successful weight-loss surgery there.

She was seeking several procedures to remove 90-inches of excess skin following her 150-pound weight-loss but is now facing a massive bill back in the US to undo the damage done in Mexico.

The surgery cost just $13,000 in Mexico whereas it would have cost more than $50,000 in the US but American doctors estimate it will cost a ball-park figure of $75,000 to correct the work.

Ms McCormick said she realised something was wrong when she woke up in the hospital with one of her lungs partially collapsed.

Referring to the marks her surgeon had made on the body parts that were supposed to be altered, she said: “The leg lift, the arm lift, the breast lift, and the tummy tuck, everything was marked out and ready to go.

“I went into surgery at four o'clock in the afternoon. And apparently I didn't come out of surgery until 1.30 in the morning.”

Her daughter, Misty Ann McCormick, claimed doctors did not come to see her mother for several days after the operation while she was prevented from visiting her.

And when Misty Ann did finally get to see her mother she found her “lips were blue” and her “nose was grey”.

McCormick said that when she did see a nurse after her surgery, she told her: “Oh chica, you're so sexy”.

“Well, I'm 65 years old, I'm not a chica and sexy was not my goal,” the upset patient recalled thinking. “I was mortified, just mortified.”

Misty Ann says that when she confronted the hospital about what had happened to her mother, she was physically removed from the premises by large, armed men who manhandled her, beat her with machine guns, and kicked her in the ribs.

She further claims that when she was thrown outside, a group of police officers who were “all speaking Spanish” refused to help her.

Misty Ann also claimed that hospital staff forced them to pay an additional $2,500 more than the pre-paid price for the procedures, as Kimberly had stayed for a longer-than-anticipated recovery period.

They were allegedly threatened with arrest and jail if they didn't cough up the cash, while Kimberly was forced to sign a form saying she wanted the unauthorized surgeries she had received.

Kimberly went to the ER when they arrived back in San Diego to receive treatment for a serious infection she had developed after being kept in an unsanitary room at the Mexican hospital.

Mexico's popular medical tourism industry often involves all-inclusive packages available for international patients traveling to receive cosmetic surgery at a lower rate than at home.

The medical tourism industry, which exists across Europe and Asia as well as in North America, is estimated to be valued at $70billion.