Botched, Broke and Back in Blighty: The NHS Isn’t Your Cosmetic Safety Net
Once designed to save lives, Britain’s health service is now patching up bargain-bin boob jobs, infected Insta-faces, and superbug-riddled buttocks flown home from Turkish ‘clinics’!
There was a time, call me old-fashioned, when the NHS was designed to save lives. You know, bleeding to death, third-degree burns, being flattened by a rogue cow on the A303. That sort of thing. But now? Now, it’s apparently a 24/7, tax-funded body shop for people who flew to Istanbul to have their nostrils reshaped into a heart emoji, only to come back oozing pus and clutching their ears like a Picasso painting.
Every week, someone who wanted perkier breasts, smoother foreheads, or an arse the size of a coffee table returns to Blighty riddled with bacteria so resistant, they make anthrax look like a mild rash. And who ends up sorting it all out? That’s right… the NHS. The same NHS that currently has waiting lists longer than the Great Wall of China, where cancer patients are pacing hospital corridors hoping someone might eventually scan their pancreas before Christmas.
These people, let’s call them what they are, vanity tourists… head off for cut-price procedures in countries where the medical regulation is roughly on par with a school raffle. They get sliced open in operating theatres located behind kebab shops, stitched up with fishing wire and handed a complimentary cocktail and a ride back to a hotel with more sequins than sterile wipes.
And then, when things inevitably go wrong, when their thighs resemble microwaved bacon and their belly buttons migrate north… they come waddling back, panicked and puffy, screaming for our overworked nurses to fix them. Cap in hand? No, more like arse in hand… usually the one they had rotated 90 degrees to make it “perkier.”
It’s like jumping into a lion enclosure in your bikini and then suing the zoo because the lion didn’t compliment your tan.
One nurse described “horrific wounds,” sepsis and people dropping dead because their butt lift in Turkey went a bit sideways; literally. And what really gets me is how these procedures are sold. Not as surgery, oh no. As holidays. You get a gastric bypass, a new rack and a discount nose job, all before lunch… and then relax poolside with a Mojito and a haemorrhage.
Now look, if you want to stuff your face full of filler, bolt on new boobs, or have your nether regions “rejuvenated” until they look like they’ve just left the factory, go for it. I don’t care. Knock yourself out. Paint your face like a drag queen doing Picasso. Inflate your backside until it has its own gravitational pull. But don’t expect the NHS to pick up the pieces when your discount boob job becomes a biohazard.
And it’s not just a little rash or a sore nipple. We’re talking superbugs, bacteria so resistant to antibiotics that they could survive a nuclear war and still infect your kneecaps. Carbapenem-resistant organisms, they’re called. Sounds like a bad Scrabble hand, but they’re the “granddaddy of resistance.” Once they’re in your system, you need a hazmat suit just to sneeze.
And of course, the NHS doesn’t get reimbursed. Not a penny. Some woman forks out £7,000 for a tummy tuck and a Brazilian butt lift combo deal: dies of an embolism; and who foots the bill for the three-week ICU stay and full-body decontamination when it goes tits-up? You and me. The British taxpayer. While she floats around heaven with her reupholstered arse.
There’s even talk now of clinics abroad paying compensation to the NHS. Good luck with that. These are places that don’t even replace scalpels between patients, what makes you think they’re going to send a cheque?
This isn’t medicine. It’s self-inflicted damage with a selfie filter. And worse, it’s crowding out people who actually need the NHS. People with cancer. People with heart disease. People who didn’t board a plane for a bargain facelift and a side of gangrene.
So no, I’m not saying people shouldn’t have cosmetic surgery. But if you go abroad to get your ears pinned back and come home looking like a melted candle, don’t expect our already-crumbling health system to glue you back together.
In fact, if you’ve got enough money for a Brazilian butt lift, you’ve got enough for private insurance. Leave the NHS to deal with genuine emergencies… like people who were born with medical problems, not ones who created them while chasing the dream of Instagram perfection and a buy-one-get-one-free thigh gap.
We’re in a health crisis, not an episode of Love Island! Post-Op Edition. Grow up. Put your vanity back in its box. And for God’s sake, stop turning your genitals into art projects with consequences.
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Chris Geiger, Author of The Cancer Survivors Club.
Daily Dose of Disbelief!
Bsky: @chrisgeiger.com
Bsky: @thecancersurvivorsclub.com
Bsky: @dailydoseofdisbelief.com
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