Thinking of getting cosmetic surgery in Turkey? First read this clinician's chilling account of her horrific experience, after which she had to fly home to save her life... and eight years later is still receiving treatment
By any measure, Michelle Furey is a woman who has built her life the hard way. The daughter of Eddie Furey of the acclaimed folk band The Fureys, she could easily have followed her famous father into music.
Instead, she chose independence – establishing her own cosmetic and aesthetics business, Asetica Clinics, which now boasts clinics in Kildare and Belfast, with another opening soon in London.
‘I started what would evolve into Asetica with €100 in my back pocket,’ she recalls. ‘Actually, it wasn’t even mine. I borrowed it. I built everything myself.’
Dressed in neat scrubs with perfectly manicured nails and her long, blonde hair hanging loose about her shoulders, Michelle looks every inch the successful aesthetician.
But her professionalism is hardened by a horrific personal experience in Turkey, during which she genuinely thought she might die.
On her return home, she ended up in hospital for weeks, as doctors battled to stabilise her and correct the damage done to her body. She faced years of surgery and, eight years on, is still not fully healed.
The whole nightmare started with a throwaway comment in her clinic.
Michelle was treating a high-profile Irish actress preparing for a major Hollywood role.
As the star was leaving, one of her assistants leaned into the actress and said: ‘She’s really good at her work, but she’s not aesthetically pleasing.’
Michelle was 37 years old, a mother to two beautiful daughters, and a size 18 to 20.
‘It floored me,’ the now 45-year-old says quietly. ‘I had always been skinny, but after my first child I put on weight and never lost it. But believe it or not, I was happy at the time.
‘I’d married the previous year, my business was doing really well and my reputation was growing.
Yet in that one moment, it was like none of the hard work mattered because of how I looked. It was a low, body-shaming blow.’
Michelle is still battling to return to full normality and still suffers debilitating symptoms
After a restless night battling self-doubt, disappointment and the return of long-dormant insecurities, Michelle mentioned the comment in passing while chatting to friends in a nail bar the next day.
To her surprise, a couple of the women mentioned they had recently travelled overseas for cosmetic procedures.
‘At the time, plastic surgery still felt like something for celebrities or millionaires,’ Michelle says.
‘But here were normal girls, lifting their tops, showing me the results of going abroad and it suddenly felt accessible.’
Later that evening, Michelle found herself scrolling through Instagram posts from the Istanbul clinic the women had used.
The images showed flawless transformations, glowing testimonials and smiling patients.
‘I went down the rabbit hole,’ Michelle admits. ‘Their social media was so slick. It looked professional and polished, and it looked safe.’
Michelle contacted the clinic through social media.
‘That was my first mistake,’ she says. ‘My next was thinking their interest in me was care when really it was sales.’
Almost immediately, the conversation was moved from Instagram to WhatsApp. Michelle revealed she wanted a tummy tuck and they asked for photos. Seconds later she had a quote of €8,000 for the procedure.
There was no consultation, no medical discussion, no proper assessment, only a price tag – and then pressure.
A few days after receiving her quote, the clinic called to say a date had come available with their surgeon, but it was a case of act now or lose the opportunity.
The next day, Michelle boarded a flight for Turkey, full of hope and blissfully unaware that she was about to step into a ‘living nightmare’.
‘When I arrived, I was picked up in a Mercedes and taken to a swanky villa,’ she says.
‘There were ten other patients there in various states of recovery, including Katie Price and some faces from reality TV, as well as a couple of average Joe Soaps like me.
‘I was greeted by someone who didn’t even know my name and then taken to a room furnished in black and gold, where the owner was waiting.
'I handed over the cash that I had begged, borrowed and saved – and that’s when their interest in me faded.’
The following day, Michelle was taken to hospital for what she was told would be a routine procedure lasting two hours.
‘I had no blood tests, no ECG, nobody took my medical history and the paperwork was in Turkish so I couldn’t even read it, never mind question it,’ she recalls.
When the surgeon finally appeared, the interaction was brief and cold.
‘He entered the room with six other men, marked my stomach, and left,’ she says.
‘Like I was a number on a conveyor belt.’
Michelle after she returned to Ireland following the surgery in Turkey
At 1pm, Michelle was taken to the operating theatre. Ten hours later she woke in complete darkness.
‘There was nobody there, nobody to tell me I was okay, and the pain was overwhelming,’ she says.
‘I couldn’t breathe properly. My throat was in agony and I could tell my vocal cords were damaged.
‘I switched on a lamp and saw a biohazard bag beside me holding the contents of my stomach. Immediately, I felt this dread within me and I knew something was terribly wrong.’
Scared and desperate for help, Michelle forced herself out of the bed to find a nurse.
‘I stood up and blood poured everywhere, over the bed, the floor, everything,’ she says.,’
Weak and disoriented, Michelle staggered towards the bathroom and banged on the door. Eventually, a nurse arrived.
‘She didn’t speak much English,’ she recalls. ‘She just grabbed some damp tissues and started wiping my face and chest. It wasn’t much, but it felt like some small kindness.’
It was during that perfunctory act that Michelle discovered a catheter in her body that hadn’t been properly attached to her bladder.
Then, when the nurse ushered her back to bed, Michelle caught sight of her surroundings.
‘The chair, the walls... they were spattered with my blood,’ she says.
Shocked by the amount of blood she saw and confused by the lost hours from what should have been a routine tummy tuck operation, Michelle asked to see the surgeon. The response stunned her.
‘I was told he was still operating,’ she says. ‘It was 11 o’clock at night and I suddenly felt like I had been part of a production line rather than a patient.’
When the surgeon eventually appeared, Michelle says he was abrupt, irritated and offered no reassurance. The next morning, she was discharged with no explanation and no aftercare plan.
‘They put me in the back of a van and drove me back to the villa,’ she says.
Once in her room, Michelle was all but left to her own devices. Racked with pain, she discovered she still had drains attached, which a nurse in a tracksuit emptied in a public toilet by pulling them out.
The only food she was offered was a thin, peppery soup, and the only medication she received was water tablets and painkillers taken from a basket in reception.
‘I had to change my own dressings,’ she reveals.
‘My wounds were leaking and nobody ever came to check them.’
That night, Michelle drifted in and out of consciousness, instinctively aware that she was suffering far more than normal post-surgery pain.
‘I remember being woken by the call to prayer,’ she says quietly, tears welling in her eyes. ‘I was relieved because it at least meant I was alive for another four hours.’
Though Michelle was meant to stay at the villa for five days, she knew she needed medical help.
‘I wasn’t fit to fly,’ she says. ‘But I had to get out if I was to save my life.’
What followed is a haze of fragmented memories – a taxi to the airport, the sound of blood rushing in her ears, finding a seat on the plane and being afraid to move in case it caused her more damage.
When she landed in Dublin, her then-husband John-Paul immediately took her to the nearest hospital, where it was recommended that she seek the help of specialist surgeons at St James’s.
It was at the renowned Dublin hospital that doctors discovered Michelle was not only on the verge of septic shock, but had a five- litre seroma in her abdomen – a dangerous accumulation of fluid – along with extensive internal damage.
But what shocked them most were the unexplained procedures.
‘I had stitches in my ears, my neck, my back, my legs, even inside my cheeks,’ she says.
‘None of it made sense. We could only guess that they had mixed me up with another patient who was having liposuction and buccal fat removal, but we’ll never know because the clinic blocked me on social media and refused to reply to requests for information from the Dublin surgeons.’
Some of the mysterious stitches Michelle found all over her body
Michelle stayed at St James’s for more than a week. After reopening Michelle’s abdomen and draining litres of fluid, surgeons attempted to reconstruct her.
‘They had to wash everything out, scrape tissue, remove infection and essentially rebuild my stomach,’ Michelle says.
‘It wasn’t a quick fix. It was years of surgeries, years of complications, years of trying to undo damage that should never have happened.’
However, her body continued to react. In the years that followed, she developed dangerous levels of visceral fat, seizures, migraines and extreme hormonal imbalances.
At one point, she lost nearly ten stone in a matter of months following further corrective surgery abroad, using a trusted clinic for speed rather than cost.
As her hair started to fall out and her gums receded, she understood her body was in crisis.
‘I was being tested for everything – Cushing’s, neurological conditions, autoimmune disorders, it never stopped,’ she says.
While medics eventually managed to stabilise Michelle, some eight years later she continues to struggle, most recently fainting in the bath and splitting her nose open after developing postural tachycardia syndrome, a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, characterised by an excessive heart rate increase. She also suffers from PTSD.
Yet remarkably, out of that pain something unexpected grew – a desire deep within her to safeguard others from the ‘cosmetic tourism predators’ she had fallen victim to.
After documenting her ordeal in a private Facebook group, word spread and messages began to arrive from people like her – botched, abandoned and desperate.
Seeing how widespread the problem was, she actively started to guide others towards reputable surgeons, offering emotional support and financial help where possible.
‘At Asetica, we offer discounted treatments on free products that I’m sent, and I put that money towards helping people who can’t afford surgery when they absolutely need it, whether they be victims of botched surgeries, trauma or domestic violence,’ she says.
‘I don’t want another person looking in the mirror and seeing someone else’s bad decision on their face forever.’
While Michelle is careful not to demonise all surgery abroad – Asetica regularly sends clients to a partner hospital in Lithuania – she has little patience for the ghouls of social media
‘There are good surgeons overseas,’ she says.
‘But don’t shop for surgery on social media, don’t be rushed by scare tactics, and if you can’t speak directly to the surgeon, walk away.’
Despite everything she has been through, Michelle refuses to let her story end in tragedy, adding another incentive to her mission to educate and help.
‘Kindness is free,’ she says. ‘I’ve been given a talent – different to the musicians in my family, but still a talent – so who am I to not use it to help someone else?
‘Every time I help or stop someone going through what I went through, a little piece of me comes back to normal.’
