A woman credits lip filler with saving her life after it led to a cancer diagnosis.
In April 2023, Edita Jucaite from Oxfordshire, England, decided to get lip fillers. He had undergone similar cosmetic procedures in the past without any reaction. However, immediately after the injections, the 36-year-old dentist noticed a problem.
“When the dermal filler went into my lips, it immediately swelled up,” she said, according to reports BBC.
The swelling later turned into a bruise. The doctor who administered the filler, Dr. Brian Franks, and Jucaite’s colleague expressed concern, urging her to see her GP.
“The next day a big bruise had spread out of my lip and into the inside of my mouth,” she recalls. “I was at work as usual and another colleague, who had lost her sister to cancer, insisted that I call my doctor. . She said she had also noticed that I was losing weight, which I didn’t try to do, and she was concerned.’
Leukemia UK / SWNS
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“It seemed rather unusual that the swelling occurred in a point and location of the lip unrelated to the injection site,” Franks said, according to the outlet.
Jucaite eventually visited her doctor for tests and was later diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. CML is a rare form blood cancer affecting the bone marrowaccording to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
“It was awful, such a shock, I burst into tears,” she said of her diagnosis. “I couldn’t hear or think about anything other than the fact that I might die.”
Jucaite underwent oral chemotherapy and will have to take another drug for life to prevent the cancer from returning. It is now in recession.
In addition, the bruises on her lip disappeared after a month of medication.
Leukemia UK / SWNS
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Jucaite recalled that she had previous bruises on other parts of her body – without bumping into anything – and only later realized it was a possible sign of cancer.
“Unexplained bruising is one of the symptoms of leukemia, along with unexplained bleeding, recurrent infections and extreme fatigue, so these symptoms are non-specific and people usually don’t associate them with leukemia,” said Dr. Georgia Papakleovoulou, head of policy and advocacy at Leukemia UK, the BBC reports. “[Jucaite is] very, very lucky to have been diagnosed through cosmetic surgery.”
Jucaite admitted that without the lip filler appointment, she wouldn’t have been diagnosed so quickly.
“Not many people can say that lip fillers saved their life, but I can,” she said. “If Dr Franks and my colleague hadn’t seen the swelling on my lip themselves and pushed me to go to the doctor, he would have put it off and put it off, and the consultant said that would mean it would be much more difficult to deal with”.
She added: “I’m so grateful that I had this response to my treatment, which ended up saving my life.”
