Buttocks Injection Costs Woman Her Limbs

Apryl Michelle Brown had always been insecure about her backside. She was always teased by her family and friends about her flat “pancake” booty. She told herself,  she’d buy herself a better one once she got enough money . “I didn’t know if I wanted to look like Janet Jackson or J. Lo,” the Los Angeles cosmetologist, 46, says in an exclusive interview featured in the November issue of ESSENCE magazine. “I just wanted a new, bigger booty.
Unfortunately, her quest for curves cost her all her limbs and almost her life.
In 2004, Brown says she paid a “pumper,” an unlicensed person, to inject industrial-grade silicone into her

buttocks. Brown can’t recall how much the woman actually charged — maybe $500, maybe $1,000 — but
over time, she says, the area became intensely irritated and painful, and the skin blackened. By early 2006
she says the silicone had hardened, causing severe pain and infection, ultimately requiring her to have
lifesaving amputation of her limbs last year.
Now adjusting to her new life with prosthetics, Brown shares her story — and her warning for others

tempted to check out “pumping parties” — with writer Amy Elisa Keith in ESSENCE. “I was left here for a purpose,” she says. “I have to get the word out so that nobody else

makes the same mistake” .