A mum was rushed to hospital after a horrific allergic reaction to fillers saw her lips balloon to six times their normal size.
Lauren Evens had her filler topped up on Wednesday (April 20), but just an hour later her lips started to swell. Eventually, they became so huge she rushed to A&E at the Countess of Chester Hospital that evening.
The 29-year-old was given antihistamines but the swelling became so severe that she could no longer talk and her "airways started to close", so she was rushed into resus and given adrenaline. Lauren said she has been having filler for the past four years.
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After a painful and terrifying experience, the beauty therapist trainee is now keen to raise awareness that such allergies can develop at any time. A video captured by the mum-of-two showing just how swollen her lips became amassed more than 23,000 likes, comments and views on TikTok.
Lauren, from Chester, said: "My lips looked like a baboon's bum. They went around six times bigger than their normal size. It was very painful.
"I went into anaphylactic shock. My neck started to swell which meant my airways started to close. They basically rushed me into resus and injected me with adrenaline and that worked.
"My lips were really sore and I felt a bit sick. At first I was fine in A&E. I couldn't close my mouth and was struggling to talk quite a bit but then the nurses rushed me through to resus and I couldn't really talk at all."
Lauren said that she'd have her lip filler refilled around every six months, and topped them up with just under one ml this time around. She continued: "I had the lip cream on and she [beautician] did them and they were fine but about an hour later they started to swell up and they went huge.
"I went to A&E and I was waiting for about six hours and they started to go down because I had some antihistamine. I fell asleep and they woke me up to give me some more antihistamine and they said that they were getting bigger and bigger. It was scary.
"They didn't really say a lot to me and just rushed me straight through to resus and when you think of resus on TV programmes, that's where you get rushed to when it's life-threatening and I was like 'but I was walking, I'm fine. How am I like this and being rushed into this place?'"
Lauren arrived at the hospital at around 10:30pm, and didn't leave until the following afternoon. She was sent home with antihistamines and the swelling subsided after three days, though she said was still in pain five days later (yesterday).
Lauren is now warning others. She continued "I've had a lot of lip filler and treatments before and had it previously around four weeks ago and didn't have a reaction. Apparently at any age and at any point you can develop an allergy to something.
"I won't be getting lip filler again anytime soon. I want to have the allergy test to see exactly what I'm allergic to, the thought that it could happen again is very scary. I don't know if it was the filler or the numbing cream.
"I get lip fillers for a confidence boost, I wouldn't tell people not to get them done if they want to get them done but I'd say be careful and it's more the fact that an allergy can come on at any time."
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