A 2000s-era Thai pop star is back in the spotlight after this weekend speaking publicly about her “near death story” following a breast augmentation surgery in South Korea that went terribly wrong.
In viral Facebook posts made on Friday, Jeeranan “May” Kitprasarn, a singer formerly signed with record label RS, said she decided to go under the knife — for the first time in her life — in late December to get breast implants. The surgery, she says, ended up putting her in an intensive care unit where she had a “10 percent chance of survival.”
Jeeranan said that, in an attempt to improve her posture (*ahem*) and confidence, she paid a whopping THB800,000 (US$24,000) to have the surgery at Grand Plastic Surgery hospital in Seoul, which she said had many positive reviews.
But soon after the operation, Jeeranan said her breasts had caused irregular bleeding and burning sensations, something she claims her doctor and nurses said was perfectly normal.
“It felt like acid running through my chest. I couldn’t even stand up or walk. I asked the doctor about this abnormal pain, but he said it was normal post-surgery,” Jeeranan wrote.
After returning to Thailand a week after the surgery, Jeeranan was bleeding so heavily she continued receiving care at KTOP Clinic, a Bangkok hospital affiliated with the plastic surgery clinic in South Korea. Again, the former pop star alleged that doctors insisted she had nothing to worry about.
It wasn’t until mid-January, after three weeks of continuous pain and bleeding — right at the verge of death — when her breasts her heavily infected leaked out pus. This was when staff at KTOP Clinic told her they had to remove the implants immediately.
While the timeline of what follows is somewhat unclear, the result of the operation was her ending up in what staff later described as “a 10 percent chance of survival.”
After the removal of the implants, Jeeranan’s mother took her daughter to another hospital, Bumrungrad, where she was diagnosed with pseudomonas aeruginosa — a blood infection that often occurs after surgery when immune systems are weakened and can even lead to death.
Now safe and out of the hospital, Jeeranan is finally speaking up.
“My breasts are not the same anymore — their shape and size have changed, and I have a huge scar,” May told Thairath in a phone interview Friday.
“I believed them when they said it was all OK and I’d get better soon,” May said, adding she was most angry about the fact that the doctors lied to her about the operation’s side effects.
Despite all this, she claims that she doesn’t object to the idea of plastic surgery and simply wants to serve as a cautionary tale: “I don’t want anyone to risk their lives ever again.”
“Cosmetic surgery change people’s lives for the better, and I’d like to say those who had successful operations are very lucky. At the same time, surgeries also ruin people’s lives … I was one of those people who almost lost their lives from surgery,” she wrote.
KTOP did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story said that the actress was in a coma. Jeeranan has clarified that she only used the term as a figure of speech, and was actually conscious, though in critical condition.
