BRAZILIAN MODEL ANDRESSA URACH AND HER PLASTIC SURGERY NIGHTMARE

Andressa Urach, 27, claims she died and 'met with her maker' after septic shocked caused her vital organs to fail - and that she believes she has been given a second chance to make amends and right the 'errors' she had made in her life.

In an interview the beauty - now a Brazilian TV host - sobbed as she told how she had been 'born again' after surviving the terrifying ordeal which even her doctors feared she wouldn't get through alive.

The model, once considered one of Brazil's most beautiful females, vowed to spend the rest of her life alerting other women to the dangers of drastic surgery.

Recalling the moment she 'died', Andressa said: 'I knew that I'd left my body and died. I arrived in an empty place, like a desert, completely silent. That's when I knew that God exists. I felt his presence. I knew I was at the judgement.

'My life flashed before me like a film. I felt ashamed and knew I wasn't worthy to enter heaven. I asked for forgiveness and begged for another chance, promised to make amends.

'I'll never forget it. Coming face to face with death, I realized that nothing else mattered. Everything I had battled for, my beauty, my bags, my clothes, my car - I'd left all that behind. It was the moment I realized I was nothing, that we are only here in this world to save our souls.' 

She continued: 'I'd give everything to turn back time and do things differently. Nobody knows what I'm going through, I'm in constant agony. I'm still in the middle of a horrible nightmare.

'All this I'm going through is punishment for my stupid vanity.

'I'm ashamed of the holes in my legs, the scars that will be there for the rest of my life. But they are also a trophy that I got through this alive. Now, thanks to God, I'm able to tell other women that vanity isn't everything. If all this serves as an example to warn others of the dangers of these things, to save other women from a premature death, then that was the reason I had to go through it.'

Andressa, a former runner-up in the popular Miss Bumbum beauty pageant, and star of Brazil's version of reality show The Farm, hit headlines last month after chemical fillers injected into her thighs began to rot her body tissue.

Procedures to drain the fillers, hydrogel and PMMA, triggered a life-threatening infection which sent her body into septic shock within hours of being rushed to hospital.

As doctors fought to save her, rumours circulated that both her legs had been amputated, with one news channel even reporting her death, distressing her millions of devoted fans around the country.

Now back home at the apartment she shares with her mother in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, Andressa knows she still has a long battle ahead of her to a full recovery.

The model, who also made international headlines when she claimed she'd had an affair with Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo, had a further scare last week when she ventured outside for the first time and soon had to be rushed back to hospital in agony to have her wounds drained.

 Clearly in constant pain and confined to a wheelchair, Andressa's wounds are still seeping and her bandages have to be changed at least twice a day.

'I never thought twice about going under the knife, and when people warned me of the dangers I just thought, "I'll deal with that if it happens". I'd go to the doctor like I go to the supermarket, saying I wanted this, that and the other. I just wanted people to look at me and think, "wow".

'Plastic surgery became an addiction for me. Even when the hydrogel started causing me problems and I began to have it removed, I was there on the surgery table planning the next procedure I wanted.

'I was actually planning to have one of my ribs removed to make me slimmer, and one of my toes removed to make my feet thinner. Can you believe that? That's how out of control it had got. That's why I think what happened to me was God telling me, 'hold on, you need to stop'.

'The pain is indescribable. It's like my skin and muscles have been ripped to shreds. It's a terrible pain that goes down right to my bones. No-one should ever have to go through this.'

She also said: 'I always considered myself ugly. I was really thin as a teenager, I even got bullied at school for being so bony. I wasn't tall enough to be a catalogue model, but I wanted to be famous. It was a time when all beautiful women on TV had curves, big bottoms and thighs. Society dictated to me how I should look if I wanted to be successful.

'I started taking steroids, but they didn't work, so I opted for surgery.'

Over the following few years Andressa went under the knife ten times, having a nose job, a bioplasty facial 'correction', twice having liposuction, two boob jobs, vaginal lip reduction and twice plumping her thighs with gel fillers hydrogel.

 She recalled: 'The hydrogel hadn't absorbed into my body and instead had started to drip down to the tops of my knees, where a big ball started to form. I had been going to the gym lifting weights and that had caused it to become inflamed.

'I went to two doctors but they refused to touch me, they didn't want to have to correct another surgeon's mistakes. In the end a surgeon friend of the family agreed to help and I started procedures to remove the fillers. I would go every few months and have the amount that had collected above my knee removed, then within weeks it had started to accumulate again.

On November 29 last year, Andressa returned to her apartment from a day on the beach when she suddenly started feeling excruciating pains in her left thigh.

She said: 'Within three hours I was begging for my mum to call an ambulance. The pain was absolutely unbearable. I started to vomit violently and my blood pressure dropped. We couldn't wait for an ambulance so my step-dad had to carry me down to his car and rush me to hospital. The pain was so bad I was becoming delirious.'

Andressa was admitted to the intensive care of the Conceicao hospital in Porto Alegre, but her condition dramatically worsened.

Within just two hours her body had gone into septic shock and her vital organs began to shut down, first her kidneys and then her lungs, and she was put on a life support machine to keep her alive.

She remembered: 'The last thing I remember was feeling bad because there were two old men sat on chairs near me because I'd taken the last bed in the ward. My mum said I needed it more than them. Then I blanked out. I was in a coma for the next three days.'

Andressa went through two emergency surgeries, while doctors pumped her body with saline solution to try to get her kidneys working again.

It was during this time that, according to Andressa, she had an out-of-body experience and had an encounter with her creator.

Her eyes welling up with tears again, she recalled: 'I remember it as clearly as day. I was in a place, a vast, empty plain, it was so quiet, and I was alone. I felt that I had died, I knew it. I felt God's presence above me.

'I knew I was at the judgement, but it wasn't God who was judging me, it was me judging myself.

'I felt so ashamed of everything I had done, the way I'd lived my life, the things I had said and the people I had hurt. I didn't feel good enough to go to heaven and I bowed my head, feeling so much shame inside of me. 

'I called out to God, begging him to give me a second chance. I asked for forgiveness and asked for him to send me back to life, for the sake of my son. That's when I woke up, back on the hospital bed.

'But it wasn't the end. That night I saw something so horrible, the spirits of death circling me, they were like black clouds but in the form of spirits, I heard screams. One of them was blacker than the others and I knew that was death coming for my soul. I remember panicking and screaming for my mother, begging for her to help me, because I was going to die.'

Churchgoer mum Marisete, who stayed at her bedside through her entire ordeal, called a pastor of her church who prayed over her.

'It was the day God gave me a new chance at life,' Andressa said. 'It was the third of December, and now every year we are going to commemorate my two birthdays, October 11 when I was born, and now December 3 when I was born again.'

She said: 'I remember my mum holding my hand and crying, begging me to eat something and get stronger. She kept saying she was going to lose me, that I was getting worse and not better.

'I was in such a bad state that the doctors warned my mum to not expect me to leave hospital until at least the end of February.

'That's when my second miracle happened. One day, my mum had gone to church and I was alone. I remembered something the pastor had said to me, that I could claim my healing if I really believed. So I prayed to God and claimed that I would be better in seven days.

'I started to get better, surprising all the doctors. And you know what, exactly seven days later I was discharged from hospital and came home.'

One of the first things Andressa did when she left hospital was to ask for forgiveness to everyone she had hurt or fallen out with.

'I was guilty of being vain and arrogant. I would open my mouth without thinking, and sometimes I would end up hurting people. Sometimes I would hurt people just by the way I was. I realise I have to reeducate myself to be a different, better person. That was the first step, to make amends with everyone I'd ever fallen out with.'

She said: 'I'm in the public eye, so people heard about me. But what about all the other women around the world who are dying because of cosmetic surgery and nobody gets to hear? How many women have injected themselves with these substances believing they need to conform to a certain image, and ended up dead? Personally I think the person who invented them needs to be thrown into prison.

'Please, ladies, don't do it. It's a poison you're putting into your body, something you are risking your whole life for. It's not worth it. Believe me, I found out the hard way.'

Adapted from www.thedailymail.com.uk by Milton França
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