[music] My name is Kira. I'm 30 years old and I haven't closed my mouth in 10 years. I went to the University of Central Florida.
My sophomore year I was dating a guy and in a way I let myself go a little bit and then we broke up and I just used it as an opportunity [music] to like get back out there. So, I had mentioned to my mom like that I had wished I had lips like Angelina Jolie and she said that's a really easy thing to do and I know somebody if you want to do it. She offered to pay for them for Christmas.
When we walked into the facility, it was decorated with lip things everywhere. It was very tacky and I remember my sister and I were both like, "What the hell? " After assessing my lips, the nurse suggested that we do 1 cc in my upper lip.
Immediately after getting the injections, I noticed that it was fuller in two places. I went back to school 2 weeks later and a [music] really good friend walked into my room and she immediately said like, "Oh my god, what did you do? " That's pretty though.
We can get someone to help us and we can. Mom, please don't. I know my mom like felt responsible and that's like the [music] worst part to me.
It It was my choice. I was an adult. I don't blame her for anything.
People look at you and they see a beautiful girl. No, they see a lip. They see a lip.
I'm a mental health counselor. It has been a struggle. When I have a client in front of me, they're there to work out their issues or [music] their problems or talk through things.
And when I'm asked a question about my looks, you know, it's very uncomfortable. I'm like deformed. I don't want people like staring at me.
I think it's more noticeable to you than to anybody else. It's difficult to shift that focus back once it's gone there. My husband Ryan is very calm and like relaxed and chill to my spinning top sometimes.
[music] He says that he never noticed anything wrong. It'll be fun to get a whole new look. You're in a new city, a new life.
I had a job that I really, really loved. We had great friends. Everybody around me knew what I had done.
But we left it all because Ryan got a good job in San Francisco. I don't know anybody yet. I'm in that moment where I have to set up a life for myself and my family and I don't feel comfortable meeting new people.
Come here. Let me just see. Don't do it on top.
I won't. I promise. Don't do too much.
I won't. I promise. Is it going to come off?
Look. Oh my god. No.
I need this surgery because I want to be a good mom. I want to be a good therapist. I want to be a a good wife and a good friend.
I need to now be that person who goes out and actively makes friends and [music] I don't feel comfortable doing that. Let's go get this taken care of. Yes.
Thank you. What do we have, Kier? She went and had something injected into her lips.
She's got apparently granulomaomas that are tender. They get in her way. She can't do anything.
How bad is it? Well, let's take a look. Oh, this is like a bilateral cleft lip deformity almost.
So weird that it didn't occur in the central part, only in the lateral thirds. It appears that Cara has two gigantic mounds of some foreign bodies in her lip and those most likely are called granulomaas. Kira, hi.
Hi. Oh my god, I'm so excited to meet you. Nice to meet you.
Kira's mom, Michelle, we're just thrilled to be here. So, welcome. Can you give us a little background of first of all, how long ago was this?
10 years now. I found a doctor through someone. They said the woman in his office does really nice lips.
So I gave [music] him the money to go, but I didn't go with them. So we get there and the nurse suggested doing just the top lip. Thank god.
So she injected one cc in the top lip of silicone. Did they do the the middle part or just the two? She did it.
Over the years it's gotten much much much much bigger. Every year it's getting bigger. It's getting bigger.
Yeah. See, that's that's really not a good thing that it's growing. When granulomaas become larger every year, that means that they're still reactive.
So, something is still going on. Some type of inflammatory response is still occurring. Plastic surgeon was in allowing his nurse to inject silicone.
I feel very responsible. I feel like I'd ruined her life with it. You know, she's not the same person that she was.
Kira was always the most outgoing person you could ever meet. The first one to want to have fun, [music] the first one to want to go out and meet people. And I lost her.
I was an adult. I was 20 years old. you know, and [music] um she didn't what is she going to do?
I'm impulsive. Like when I get the idea to do something, I'm going to do it. I I absolutely weigh myself for that.
[music] Adult kid didn't do I didn't do my research. I was too impulsive. But a 28-year-old adult though [music] goes to a nurse and say, "Hey, listen.
I'm going to put some of your lip that you'll look great and it's going to be permanent. [music] You won't have to do it again. " You you go for it.
At the end of the day, who's more responsible, [music] a young, impressionable kid or a licensed medical professional? I think the [music] answer is pretty obvious. I would just like to look normal again.
I I know it's not going to be perfect, but I'm hoping to decrease the size deformity of it. Yeah. So, I can let this go.
I want to like forgive myself and I want her to forgive hers. You want to move on, especially? Yes.
My god. I've never wanted to move on in my entire life. Yes.
So, let me go ahead and go examine you. I want to be able to stop thinking about this. Like just it's like enough already.
Little hyperpigmentation there, huh? See that? But it's actually really soft.
It's not like there's one firm mass. It's what we call a diffuse swelling. So, they're very soft.
It's just that they're very big. So, this is not something that we do all [music] the time and remove this type of product because when you go ahead and make an incision in an [music] area like that, especially with this, because it's not one mass that you can just grab it and it's gone, muscles that control your lip could be involved with this. Technically, we don't know how it's going to be.
You will not get perfect symmetry cuz it's too hard to gauge [music] that. I'm sorry. [laughter] Okay.
I've done this many times myself. Sometimes it's fabulous. Other times it's not so fabulous.
Cara deserves a surgery. She's had this too long. I mean, her lips, they walk in the room before her, man.
We need to do something to help her. I I can't I can't go on with this. I really just can't.
I really can't. [snorts] So, you're up for it then? Oh my god.
Yes. Knowing what we talked about? Yes, we're up for it.
Oh my god. I'm willing to go through with this with the chance that this could get worse because if I if I [music] don't, it's going to get worse. Anyways, I'm so happy.
I'm sure you can't tell right now, but I feel better than I've felt [music] in 10 years. So, we look forward to seeing you. Thank you so much.
Oh my god. Oh, I'm here to see Dr NASA for surgery. I'm a little worried about the unknown.
I know I don't like this obviously, but I just don't I don't know how to picture what I'm going to look like. It's been a long time dealing with this, [music] hasn't it? Feels like a lifetime.
Since you were 20 years old. I am looking forward to just [music] closing this door and just moving on. For Kira's surgery today, I'll start by making an incision on the side of her lip and conservatively beginning sizing the mass.
I'll then debulk the other side of the lip, after which I'll assess the evenness of the lip's volume, making any needed adjustments to get the two sides as symmetrical as possible. Let's go conservative first. You agree?
Mhm. So, every one of these little cuts we're making in the skin is very, very petite and gradual. If we're too aggressive and we just take big chunks of lip tissue out, then we have a very high risk of having permanent asymmetry because we took too much skin off the lip and we can make it too small.
In this situation, I like to peacemeal things. I'd rather go conservative and gradual. I can always go back and take out more, but I can never go back and reverse things if I taken out too much.
Here's your muscle. We're cutting off tissue, but we don't really [music] see something specific to just remove in a nice defined plane. Yeah, that's good.
I think I'm like right just about right here. I feel what I'm removing is [music] fibroic or inflammatory tissue. I don't feel that there's a gigantic mass of granuloma, but I know that there's something in there which doesn't feel normal.
We took a portion of whatever that tissue was, which I'll bet you it's just straight infiltrative tissue with no silicone. And looks like, you know, I think what happens [music] after a period of time, the silicone gets replaced. Sometimes your own body can eat away the silicone [music] because looks like the inflammatory response or the cells that went to this area where the silicone was ate it.
My goal is really to get the lip as symmetric as possible. And it's hard to do when you are [music] looking at a piece of swollen tissue. And so we're kind of playing with that right now.
Regardless of what I do today, no matter how hard I try, I will not get these lips perfectly symmetric. It just does not happen in nature. Let's just see how that looks.
Okay, let me I'm going to scrub out for a minute. I'm going to take a photo. To me, it's very important to take photos and put a closeup on the big screen because you can see a lot more imperfections that way.
Look at the difference here versus there. Huge difference. I'm really happy.
It's about as symmetric as I can make a lip. I think Kira will look pretty good in 2 weeks once this [music] finally goes down. Great job.
All right, let me get this off my head somehow. And I'm stuck. All righty.
[music] So, it's your first day after surgery. Swollen, which is to be expected. Remember, we're not out of the woods yet.
We have to make sure that the silicone doesn't reactivate and get big and swollen again. And that could happen anytime in the future. [music] When I went in there, we did not see any like solid [music] formed pieces of silicone.
Okay. We saw thick tissue which might have been the whole granuloma [music] thing. Okay.
So, we cut that off equally on both sides. As I'm examining Kira's lips, I feel a little bit of swelling, but they look good and they're healing well. Here's there.
Okay, take a look at that. What do you think of that? I can't I can't believe it.
It just looks beautiful. I mean, we [music] never expected the results to be so great. Honestly, you're like a magician with this.
Honestly, we're saying we're thrilled. We could We couldn't be more thrilled. Well, now I'm happy, but I'm cautiously [music] thrilled still.
Okay. Because I want to make sure you heal. Yeah.
Cara's lips look fantastic now. However, this is going to be a long process because [music] these granulomaas can come back today, tomorrow, next week, next year, 5 years from now. It's a wait and see game, but I'm encouraged by what I see so far.
Thank you so much. Get in here. Honestly, here we go.
Come on, everybody. [music] When we moved to San Francisco, my world got smaller. I felt very self-conscious and I only had a couple of friends and the whole process of interviewing for a job was just so anxietyprovoking for me.
I am looking forward to just moving on, having fun. Today I'm meeting up with [music] my husband, Ryan, and my daughter, Lennox, so we can have a night out in our new city. There she is.
Hi, babe. A look at that smile. Can I get a kiss?
Kira's lips look beautiful. They look perfect. I am definitely looking forward to kissing those lips.
Wow. Oh, she's reaching for [laughter] them. She's reaching for them.
She's never seen me with a color on my lips. She's trying to [music] say, "Mommy, they look great. " Very proud of you.
Thank you, baby. I love you. I love you, too.
I feel like I'm on cloud n. Nothing is holding me back [music] now that this has been resolved. It's very exciting, though.
It is. I just like think of all the things we can do now. Meet friends.
You can start Yeah. Start fresh. Yeah.
Yeah, starting over. Y, you know, I have no excuse for [music] not getting to know people in our new city. And I want to take advantage of [music] every opportunity that comes our way.
We would have never eaten this before, right? No. Maybe in my pajamas.
Before surgery, my lips were big and bulbous, and I hadn't closed my mouth fully in over 10 years. Now, [music] my lips have a more natural shape and size. My mouth can finally close.
See? There you go. Nice.
It's good, isn't it? Dr Nassf [music] is so amazing. I can't believe what he's been able to do for me.
He really did a great job. I'm not sure how to adequately thank Dr [music] Nassf, but I'm so grateful. So grateful.
Oh my god. There you go. M.
You got to get messy with it.
