Mala McAlpin The rapper has recently revealed details of her $800 buttocks injections in an interview with GQ this week, where she details the operation that took place in a basement in Queens – without anesthetic.
“It was the craziest pain ever,” says Cardi. “I felt like I was gonna pass out. I felt a little dizzy. And it leaked for, like, five days,” she told GQ. She also admitted she had gone back for touch-ups, only to find that the operation had been shut down because ‘someone died on her table.’
“Often at times the patients don’t know exactly what’s been injected,” says Plastic surgeon Dr. Wright A. Jones of black market butt injections.
Jones tells The Hollywood Reporter that it sounds as though Cardi B’s treatment was done on the black market through a procedure that filled her buttocks with silicone, an illegal filler rife with possible health risks. Silicone may enter the bloodstream and spread throughout the body, potentially causing various infection, kidney failure, stroke, respiratory failure, loss of limbs, heart failure or even death.
Of the pain Cardi described, Jones says “That is completely characteristic of the black market injectors. It can be excruciatingly painful.” As the procedure isn’t carried out in a medical facility, the patients cannot be safely anesthetised. Leaks may also occur due to a poor injection technique.
In proper practice, fat is processed appropriately for safe and legal butt implants, with the entire body sterilised and patients put to sleep for the two to three hour procedure.
This procedure will generally carry a pricetag of around $10,000, and so for many, black market injections may seem like a viable alternative. “They will risk their life just to save a buck,” Jones said. “Oftentimes the patients don’t know exactly what’s been injected. Even though silicone is illegal, they may not even get medical grade silicone injected. Black market businesses might buy silicone from Lowe’s or Home Depot.”
Regardless of whether adverse side effects present themselves after a black market treatment, “eventually the body will reject it, and [the rejection] may take up to 10 or 15 years.” Jones says the trend of getting silicone fillers has been “booming” over the last few years in particular, but over the next decade or so, we will begin to see how recipients’ bodies reject the injections, and many patients are likely to require major surgery to remove all of the silicone from the fat. Jones likens this process to “separating salt from sand.”
“It’s likely that down the road Cardi B could need some medical care,” said Jones, also adding that it’s possible that the procedure could have an effect on her pregnancy. “She has to monitor everything closely and follow up with a board certified plastic surgeon.”
