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PLASTIC SURGERY NEWS, SURGERY NEWS, COSMETIC SURGERY NEWS Current NEWS  |
Woman faults border clinic
Lisa Marie Gómez
San Antonio Express-News
A Lakehills mother of four claims she was disfigured in December from plastic surgery at the Centro de Ginecología y Obstetricia in Nuevo Laredo.
Lynn, who didn't want her last name used, called the San Antonio Express-News last week to complain about her surgery at the clinic.
The Mexican clinic is co-owned by David Hernandez, a marketer based in San Antonio who goes by the name Dr. Dave. He acknowledged Friday that Lynn had surgery at his clinic and developed complications. But he said he thought they were successfully treated in a follow-up visit at the clinic.
Lynn, 36, told the newspaper Hernandez encouraged her to have surgery at his clinic when she took a friend to his San Antonio office for a checkup.
She said Hernandez left her with the impression he would perform the surgery. Patients call him Dr. Dave at his office, but he doesn't have a medical degree and says he doesn't present himself as a doctor.
"When me and my girlfriend specifically asked him, 'Are you a doctor?' she said, 'Uh, yeah, but I haven't done anything in four months because I had a stroke.'"
Hernandez denied the claim.
Lynn said she and her husband found out someone else would be doing the surgery when they drove to the Nuevo Laredo clinic. She agreed to go through with it and underwent liposuction and a tummy tuck Dec. 10.
After returning to their home near Medina Lake, Lynn noticed she was having trouble healing.
"I kept bleeding on my suture and I didn't know what it was," she said.
She returned to the clinic and had surgery to repair her bleeding stomach incision.
Lynn said the infection returned in late December, and she had trouble standing straight.
"I still can't stand up perfectly straight and it's been eight weeks," she said.
Hernandez said he didn't charge her for the follow-up surgery, and he didn't know she still had problems.
"What caused it, I don't know. I don't know if it was her fault, our fault, but that doesn't make a difference to us, we take care of the problems," he said.
Lynn went to see Dr. Tolbert Wilkinson, a San Antonio plastic surgeon, after a friend suggested she seek another opinion.
Wilkinson said she had fluids trapped inside that hadn't drained properly, which could lead to infection.
Wilkinson put her on new antibiotics and has been draining the fluids out of a hole on her lower abdomen that she said was the size of a thumbnail on the outside, and the size of a half-dollar on the inside.
"It's finally healing," she said.
When asked if she would do it all over again, she said, "Oh, absolutely not."
http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/medical/stories/MYSA020605.12A.border_makeover_problem.7d2b2cc4.html
