celebritiesFormer model Linda Evangelista, 56, has lived in seclusion for the past five years. The model once did a cosmetic procedure to get rid of fat, but it went wrong and it could have “disfigured” her body. But now Evangelista decided that enough was enough and she no longer wanted to hide. In an intense interview with People, she tells her story for the first time.
In the American magazine People, Linda talks about the emotional and physical pain she endured for years after undergoing CoolSculpting. This procedure amounts to the same level as liposuction, but will be less invasive. However, the process went wrong. Instead of diminishing fat cells, the cells increased and bulges appeared all over her body, leaving the model “permanently disfigured.”
Evangelista sued in September against Zeltiq Aesthetics Inc, CoolSculpting’s parent company, for $50 million in damages, alleging that she had been unable to function since she underwent the surgeries from August 2015 to February 2016: I loved being on the podium. Now I am afraid to meet someone I know ”, she says in the interview. “I can no longer live like this, hiding and ashamed. I couldn’t live with this pain any longer. I’m ready to finally talk.”
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Three months after her last treatment, she started seeing bumps on her chin, thighs, back, and chest. In places where she just wanted to get rid of her fat, the bulges suddenly started growing, becoming hard and eventually numb: “I tried to fix it myself, because I thought I was doing something wrong,” says Evangelista. I started dieting and exercising more hoping that would help. “I got to the point where I stopped eating at all. I thought I was losing my mind.” Lumps on her body caused many diseases: “If you walk without a corset in a dress, I get scrapes that almost bleed. Because it’s not like soft fat rubbing against each other a little, it’s heavy lumps of fat that really hurt.”
I finally went to see her doctor in June 2016. I was crying and said: I haven’t eaten, I’m starving. What am I doing wrong? “And he told me no diet or too much exercise could work.” PAH is a rare side effect that occurs in less than 1 percent of CoolSculpting patients, in which the freezing process only thickens and expands the affected fatty tissue. Science estimates the risk as 1 in 2,000. In many cases, the affected areas are no longer amenable to liposuction as they were in the first place.
Evangelista previously said she was depressed and hated herself for years, but now she wants to straighten it out. “I’m tired of living like this. I’d like to walk out the door with my head held high, even though I don’t look like myself anymore.”
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