I won a $12 lip filler raffle — it went red-hot wrong
Looks like this raffle wasn’t worth the battle.
Ellie Gallear, 22, was thrilled when she won a $12 raffle on Facebook for a lip filler treatment — but instead was met with a horrible allergic reaction and botched lips, according to Jam Press.
Gallear, who is from the UK, had seen her friends get them done and liked the look, so she took the winning offer to get the treatment from a local salon.
However, the next morning after the injection, she said her lips became inflamed — so badly, in fact, that she was “worried they would burst.”
“I instantly knew something wasn’t right when I got home — my lips were huge,” Gallear said.
“They were so red hot and so painful.”
After seeing how big her lips had gotten, she picked up the phone to call the beautician who had injected her with the filler.
The 22-year-old alleged to Jam Press that the reason her lips had become so swollen and painful was because the injector had put in 1.7 milliliters, which some doctors have advised against.
According to a 2021 article published in the International Open Access Journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, “the use of 0.5–1 ml in each session, every 30 days is essential because lips have limited expansion properties.”
Leading aesthetic clinician Dr. Tim Pearce also believes that you shouldn’t inject more than 1ml into someone’s lips per filler session, although some practitioners do tend to put in more than that.
Gallear alleged that the beautician simply told her to take an antihistamine for her troubles.
But she wanted to get a second opinion, so she decided to message someone else she knew who was fully trained.
The other professional advised her to have the filler dissolved — but Gallear alleged that she is “too scared” for someone else to touch her lips, so she is letting them dissolve naturally.
“My partner kept telling me how bad it was and said I looked like I had been punched in the mouth,” Gallear told Jam Press.
“A lot of my family thought the same.”
However, three months after the botched injection, she’s still left with some wonky-looking swollen lips but is hoping that her story can be a warning to others before getting fillers or other cosmetic injections.
“Just do your research,” she said. “Don’t go to anybody thinking that it’ll be okay because I, for one, can assure you it won’t.
“I’m all for anybody’s lips to look nice,” she added. “Just make sure you go to someone who’s good at it.”
Now, Gallear has sworn off filler and vowed to never get it done again.
“As soon as I get them properly dissolved I will never, ever touch anything filler-based again,” she said.