FROM a distance, Ms Lau An Ling, 40, an actress from the Philippines, seems to be an attractive woman.
She is dressed sexily in a tight pair of jeans and a top revealing a taut midriff, as she walks towards me for the interview.
Then, the shocker.
Her face, close up, looks like someone had melted the edges around it.
This is the result of a doctor injecting silicone directly into her face and then another doctor trying to remove it.
Her eyes have a startled look.
Part of her eyelids had been cut away and pulled too high - the work of another doctor.
Her nose looks a little too bulky for her face. She said yet another doctor had injected silicone into it.
Silicone, once injected into the body, is almost impossible to remove.
Doctors can try to remove it, but most times, they don't succeed.
NOT QUALIFIED
Her hands look a little like a man's hands, thick and bulky.
A fourth doctor had injected silicone into it, in an effort to make to them look smooth and youthful.
Since 1999, she has spent more than US$200,000 ($270,000) in an effort to look more attractive and yet, what she looks like now is a mockery of her former attractive self.
She has been to many doctors in the Philippines, elsewhere in Asia and even in Europe.
And the irony is not lost on her.
Ms Lau reveals to The New Paper on Sunday that she has not felt like a woman for a long time.
Her spiral into plastic surgery hell started in 1999 in the Philippines when she went for an operation to make her vagina more attractive.
The operation, called a vaginaplasty, was done by a doctor who was not properly qualified to do it. 'It looks okay, but I can't feel anything now. He cut my clitoris and also the nerves there,' she said in an interview with The New Paper on Sunday.
She finally come to Singapore early this month to seek help from Dr Woffles Wu, consultant plastic surgeon at Camden Medical Centre.
One of her friends, who had also been disfigured by bad cosmetic work, had come here and seen him.
'I saw her improve month after month. Now she's looking younger than before. I want Dr Wu to do the same for me, to restore my looks,' she said.
Whether Dr Wu can deliver those results is another matter.
She has consulted him, but it is not clear how much he can do.
Said Dr Wu: 'She's been pumped full of silicone by doctors, and persuaded into getting Botox and fillers done every week in the Philippines till she is financially dry.'
He has seen the extent of damage on her face and body, and is horrified by what has been done to her.
'Now that she has come for bona fide plastic surgery, the question is whether we can do anything for her at all,' said Dr Wu.
Ms Lau, who is single, said she had wanted the vaginaplasty because at that time she was acting in sexy movies, like the Filipino equivalent of Baywatch.
She felt the surgery would boost her confidence even if she did not appear naked in the movies.
She also allowed doctors to inject silicone into her vagina to plump it up and make it look more sexy. Over time, the silicone hardened.
'After that operation, I was desperate to make myself more beautiful, to assure myself that I am an attractive woman,' she said.
She then went from doctor to doctor, who each persuaded her to let them do this or that procedure on her.
'I was very trusting and some of these doctors are big names in the Philippines. I also really wanted to believe them, to give myself hope,' she said.
In 2000, she believed a doctor who said she could make her look younger by injecting silicone into her face.
'I was then about 32 years old. In my industry, that's considered quite old and there were all these younger, more beautiful women coming up all the time,' she said.
She was still acting in some movies and appearing on TV.
The doctor put her to sleep and injected silicone into her face.
'I woke up to a face that was as round as a plate,' she said.
She has not done any acting, appeared in movies or on TV for more than five years now.
It was only this month, when she consulted Dr Wu, that she was told one should never be put to sleep while undergoing what is essentially a filler procedure.
'Dr Wu told me that I should have been awake, with a mirror in front of me and watching while the doctor injects me, so that I can see exactly how much I want injected in my face,' she said.
The filler used on her face should also not have been silicone.
In 2000, she had silicone injected into her buttocks to give her a sexier look.
Things took a turn for the worse when the silicone hardened and caused her buttocks to take on a lumpy shape.
Her face also became lumpy.
Desperate, she flew to China in 2001 to seek help. The doctor in China - she did not say which part of China - cut behind her ears and tried to suck the silicone out.
He only half succeeded.
'My face looked sunken because only half of the silicone came out,' said Ms Lau.
In 2004, another doctor she went to see said he could do liposuction to take the silicone out of her buttocks.
The liposuction caused depressions to appear here and there on her buttocks.
The silicone had also travelled down from her buttocks to her thighs, making them look uneven and lumpy.
She has travelled to Bangkok and Hong Kong to consult doctors and see if they can return her looks to her. She also tried to so the same thing in Italy.
The Italian and Hong Kong doctors did not operate on her.
'The Bangkok doctor tried to help, and it did improve a little bit, but not enough,' she said.
Her only hope now is that Dr Wu can work a miracle for her.
'I want to return to acting. I need my looks back,' she said.
SHOULD YOU SEE A GP OR SPECIALIST?
IT'S quite clear that general practitioners (GPs) should not do some procedures in aesthetic medicine.
These include invasive ones such as liposuction, nose jobs, double eyelids and breast enhancement.
But some GPs do these procedures.
And there are patients who do not check their doctors' credentials and then wonder what went wrong when their results are less than perfect.
The aesthetic medicine industry came under the Ministry of Health's scrutiny recently, after controversial treatments performed by GPs.
Some resulted in severe side effects or were based on insufficient scientific evidence on safety and efficacy.
A proposed liposuction regulatory regime is expected to be announced by the ministry today.
Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan told Parliament on Monday that only high-risk procedures such as liposuction would be targeted because they have the potential to lead to severe complications, including death.
Said Dr Woffles Wu, consultant plastic surgeon at Camden Medical Centre: 'A family physician is not a specialist in any of those procedures and should not be allowed to perform them.'
In the past, he said, the relationship between GPs and plastic surgeons was 'quite good'.
The plastic surgeons would send their patients to GPs for follow-ups, stitch removals and dressings.
Now, that has changed.
'There are some GPs who will wrongly advise their patients on which doctor to see. For example, the GP will say he can do the job, when the best person for the job is a plastic surgeon,' said Dr Wu. 'This is not thinking for the good of the patient.'
Dr Erik Ang, consultant plastic surgeon at Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre, said: 'There are risks involved, risks that sometimes have a permanent effect on the buyer.'
Before you subject yourself to any sort of treatment, you should ensure that the practitioner has the right type of training, appropriate experience and the right type of licence, he said.
'Plastic surgery includes training in surgical techniques, tissue handling, skin and wound care, reconstructive surgery for burns, trauma and congenital defects, and aesthetic surgery,' said Dr Ang.
'Every one of the 37 plastic surgeon accredited in Singapore has at least that amount of training before he is licensed to practise.'
Patients should also try to assess the expected results of any aesthetic procedure with the aid of before and after photos, if possible, and the risks against the anticipated benefits.
This article was first published in The New Paper on Apr 27, 2008.
