A man woke up after getting a nose job to find that the plastic surgeon had removed his nose entirely.
Patient Vishal Thakkar went to Dr Angelo Cuzalina, the president of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery, for more than eight surgeries over the course of a half a dozen years.
Mr Thakkar told the local Fox affiliate that after he went through a divorce in 2006, he decided to ‘do something selfish’ and get a nose job.
Horrific outcome: Vishal Thakkar initially went in for one surgery for his nose, and then ended up going back for various fixes, based on breathing problems and infections from the original surgery
What he’s stuck with: In the final surgery in 2011, Mr Thakkar woke up and found out that the doctor removed his nose entirely because there was an infection
Though he is originally from New York, Mr Thakkar was living in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the time and went to one of the leading plastic surgeons in the area, Dr. Cuzalina.
Dr Cuzalina could not be reached for comment and his lawyers previously denied interview requests from Fox 23 on the grounds that they would not be able to speak about Mr Thakkar’s medical history given doctor-patient confidentiality agreements.
Thakkar says that after the first surgery he suffered some relatively minor breathing problems that occurred when he slept or worked out.
He went back to Dr Cuzalina eight times within the year to treat various fixes from the previous treatments.
Before one of the surgeries, Thakkar alleges that he specifically told one of Dr Cuzalina’s nurses that he did not want them to take any cartilage from his ears should they need it for his nose during the surgery.
When he woke up a few hours later, he had pain behind his ears because they had done just that. Fox 23 says the doctor later emailed an apology to Mr Thakkar.
Repeat problems: During one surgery, the doctor took cartilage from Thakkar’s ear, and another from above his rib cage when he told them explicitly that he did not want that done
Before the work: Mr Thakkar said that he initially decided to have surgery after his divorce, calling it ‘something selfish’
Another similar situation came about when they removed cartilage from above his ribcage because they had run out of cartilage by his ear.
The final straw, however, came when he woke up from a surgery in 2011 after he went under the knife to treat several infections.
When he woke up, he had no nose.
‘He told me that there was an infection in there and since I was on the operating table and unconscious he had to make the decision,’ Mr Thakkar told Fox 23.
It appears that the doctor-patient relationship was contentious before the life-altering surgery, however, as the lawsuit filed by Mr Thakkar’s attorney alleges that Dr. Cuzalina covertly recorded their conversations in the medical offices.
Man with the knife: Angelo Cuzalina is the president of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery, and has no prior complaints listed against him in Oklahoma where his practice is located
Those recordings were then used as justification for Dr. Cuzalina’s August 31, 2012 letter where he said that he would no longer operate on Mr Thakkar because of his ‘ongoing threats and harassment against my staff, my practice, and me personally’.
As a part of Mr Thakkar’s lawsuit, he went on to say that the plastic surgeon, who is the president of the American Board of Cosmetic Surgery and has no prior complaints filed against him in the state of Oklahoma, gave him a dangerous mix of prescription medication.
The lawsuit says Mr Thakkar was ‘prescribed an excessive amount of medication, enough to kill the patient, if taken, including but not limited to Loratab, Ambien, Valilum, and Oxycodone.’
This is far from the end of his plastic surgery nightmare, however, as he is determined to fix his face.
‘There is no way I am going to live like this. It is worse than being dead,’ he said.
Read more: Daily Mail
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