April Brown

A woman has been left a multiple amputee following back-alley cosmetic surgery that went horrifically wrong.

April Brown suffered life threatening infections after having silicone implants injected into her buttocks.

The procedure was carried out by an unlicenced practitioner in Los Angeles, she said, with complications leading to several stints as a hospital inpatient.

It was during those hospitalisations that she suffered the agonising infections.

‘I got the butt implants eight years ago,’ she told NBC. ‘For five years, I lived in pain. Excruciating pain.’

The mother-of-two said that the back-alley procedure was carried out at a ‘pumping party’ by a back-alley doctors.

‘They call it medical grade silicone,’ she said, ‘but a lot of it is industrial grade silicone.’

In 2011 Brown’s health deteriorated to the point that she was left with no choice but to have all of her limbs removed.

Once a cosmetologist and fashion designer, Brown hopes to get through her devastating ordeal and begin a new career as a motivational speaker.

She said she credits her words of her family and friends for giving her the strength and will to survive, adding: ‘We don’t validate each other.

‘We really don’t know how our friends feel about us, unless we have very expressive friends.’