Botox: Stories

I think I know what you mean about actual eye muscle weakness. I don't have blurry vision, but my eyes get very tired especially at the end of the day. I do not believe that the botox wears off after three months. This is a marketing gimmick to make sure people have more botox every three months. At the end of three months lots of the botox effect has worn off but lots of it is still there too. I think it takes about 9 to 12 months to wear off totally. Most people who keep having it would have no idea when it completely wears off because they never get back to base. Any thoughts?

hi rubyrae719 I'm just like you i had botox 5 time spread over puite long time eccept the last time i had one on april then the another on june 2009 , yes I do have mauscle weaknee and my vision so blurry that is killing me when i read only , and i had this blured vision after the last injaction , any way may last injaction was june 25,09 and now is Aug23,09 may samile get improve i'm doing much better but vission is still blurred and stil my face is not the same one i used to have it is not out i need more time , but thanks god way diffrent than june or july i can not wait until i get my face back hope all of you feeling good regard's

I feel for each of you going through this,the agony of waiting it out till the stuff is out of your system has to be so hard, hopefully everyday brings you closer to the end of your nightmare-my story is not quite the same but want to ask if anyone has had the actual feeling of eye muscle weakness SEVERAL months after getting botox. It comes & goes around both eyes, worse when I am tired, I find myself at times using my forehead muscle to try to help compensate. My eyes do not totally clamp shut or even close involuntarily but it's just an overall feeling of weakness around them. My actual vision is not effected. I have been doing much reading and now wonder about the connection, read that there is human albumin in botox, which is from human blood, -- there is a very small chance of contracting certain disease from albumin that was not properly screened,the data sounds as if the risk is almost nonexistent but it is still there. Some of my symptoms seem to relate to symptoms of ocular myasthenia gravis, not all but some. I keep reading and keep trying to figure it out, the fact that I never experienced any of this before the last time I had botox injected which by the way was not my first time getting botox. In all I have had it done 4 times spread over quite a long time period but had never experienced this before. Can anyone else say that they are experiencing eye muscle weakness feelings almost a year after an injection or be able to shed any light on the connection this far out from having it done?? Any input would be appreciated...Thank you ladies.

I live in Australia. I've had botox twice before. This is the only real disaster I've experienced. The other two times there was some minor aesthetic issues but nothing horrendous like now. I only had 15 units (total) and several areas injected - forehead, bunny lines, crows feet. Each shot was 2 units or less. BUT I was taking a tetracycline antibiotic at the time and it increased the effect and the side effects of the botox dramatically. It looks like I had 150 units injected and the side effects have been mind-blowing. The doctor should have known about the interaction with the antibiotic and warned me but she did not. I found out about it myself on the internet. I have also accessed Allergan literature and medical studies which warn against concurrent administration of certain antibiotics and botox. My disaster made me LEARN about botox and become informed about both the product and the procedures. I stopped getting sucked in by the marketing (safe, 3 million injections last year, minimal risks, everyone has it, makes you look younger, make you feel better) and started to look at what really happened to me and what other users really had to say. I look older. My face looks hard and ugly. My eyes are smaller and sunken. The asymmetry in my face is more obvious. My face has been flattened and become elongated as the facial fat slid south. My cheek fat should be up high not sunken to my jaw line. In pre-botox photos my cheek fat IS up high. Pre-botox my eye muscles were strong and held back the herniated fat and puffiness. In pre-botox photos I look younger, fresher and most importantly HAPPIER. After botox I no longer have any crows feet whatsoever and no lines on my forehead, but who cares? I look revolting. I look like a zombie. As I started to look at more anecdotal reporting about botox (instead of focusing on the medical statistics) I noticed that similar adverse outcomes are not that rare. The drooping eyelid, the asymmetrical smile, the facial droop, eyebags, eyelid puffiness, the Botox Chipmunk. And we are just the people seeking help. There would be many others hiding at home and telling nobody. Many, many adverse events would not be reported. I reported mine to the FDA and to Allergan. People don't want to admit to the world that they have botox so they can't admit the adverse outcomes or side effects either. This is why there seem to be so few of them. I also started to notice the all adverse outcomes are dismissed by medical practioners (especially the side effects) or blamed on poor injecting technique. I agree that poor injecting technique plays a big part. I simply cannot believe how stupid and trusting I was. Really, think about it... we are paying someone we don't know very well to inject a poison into our faces and if they use too much or don't put it in the right place then we are stuck with how it looks for months and months and months. I am ashamed of how uninformed and trusting I was and how little control I took over it myself. I am not anti-botox, but nobody knows my face better than me and I should have remembered that before I just let the doctor take over. I have to believe that my face will come back from this or I would fall into despair. The first time I had botox (Oct 08) it had almost completely gone away by the second time I had it (April 09). It took SIX months and the muscles had not yet regained full strenght. When I had the disaster in July 09 there was still a lot of the effect left over from April 09 so I am assuming it will last even longer this time. I photograph my face every Friday (with particular emphasis on comparing the size and shape of the eyes and eyebags as this is the most noticeable disfigurement) and today is Friday of Week 4. I am pleased to report that - while my face still looks ABSOLUTELY RUBBISH - there have been minimal changes since Week 3. At least it is not getting worse. Rebecca - I love your analogy about a 'crap shoot'. I used the phrase 'hit and miss' to describe it and I think we mean exactly the same thing. Keep me updated as to how you are getting on. Cheers.

wow who enlightened you to the whole deal... have you done the botox before... where do you live.. I give non surgical facelifts for a living... so needless to say this has put me in a really bad positiion for lining up work, i cant even imagine looking the same ever does it actualy go back ? My face is so weird. Obviously when my Doctor told me that there is never disasters... that he only has to do some tweeking from time to time... he was full of it. Reading the stats just on this website would imply its a crap shoot could go either way... thanks alot eh, I went in for a subtle difference, for my wedding.. wedding came and went.. hide my face in my hair... no close ups.. and no front view. How can they take this chance if its common for bad outcome...and not warn you?? I get the feeling that way to much has been used in my face... my doctor and his staff actually told me that I looked good... Nobody else has told me that for 2 months... used to hear it all the time.

Oh and 'the effect of botox lasts 3-4 months' is a marketing gimmick. This is to make you go back every 3-4 months to have more to keep it at 'full effect'. To get rid of botox completely and build the muscles back up to their previous state, it takes about 6-9 months. Honestly. I am only in month 1. AGES to go.

It is called the Botox Chipmunk. It looks terrible and lasts for ages. It is caused by overweakening of the eye muscle or a shot in the wrong place for crows feet means the eye muscle can't hold up the cheek fat anymore and it slides down the face to the bottom. The cheeks puff out on facial movement especially smiling. It is also possible that the cheek muscle that raises your cheek also might have been affected. This muscle is connected the muscles around your mouth. I am a Botox Chipmunk at the moment too. My nasolabial folds have become pronounced (I have never had them before!) and sometimes it comes with puffiness and horizontal lines under the eyes, which I have also. It is a bizarre and hideous look and I hope it comes good soon because it is very depressing looking like this every day. I wonder how my poor paralysed eye muscle is eventually going to pull all of my facial fat back up my face against gravity. I have got a Tua Viso to try to help it along when the muscles re-engage, which will be in several weeks. I don't know if this will work or not but I will try anything to get my old face back. Botox has aged me ten years. I look DERANGED when I smile. Nothing works properly and it twists and shelves and creates awful shadows. I have extreme bags under my eyes. SCREAM!!

Yes... and not in a good way. I had it done for crows feet... for the first three days it looked good... by day ten... it yanked my eyes.. they look like high.. they do not go in the same direction.. my eyes are also sunk in... my eyes are such a different shape that when I put my same make up I cant even fake my previous shape. It has also pushed my checks south... you know like one of the seven dwarves...cartoonish... the lines between my nose and month are more prominate and my smile looks like ive ben smoking for years. Kinda the sunkn in look... I look Bad. Hope it goes away.... it think that I paid for this and to think that a Doctor would actually want to keep money for this work is just gross ...oh ya I look older and my whole face is puffy... good times!!

Hi Rebeca .. sorry to know that I , but trust me all my friend and other people the know me that i have the most beautiful smile , and now i don't like to smile because all ask me what happen to me even al though i'm not that bad with my smile but i can not smile as i used to be i wish some one write to me and telling me that i will be good , even though i when to my family doctor he told me i'm perfectly fin , all i nee to be patience and i look good , but i can feel it and it show even more when i smile from deep mu hear or if something funny i see or some one talk to me i can not smile and i have to put my hand so no one can see my fake smile

Wow... would I ever like to talk to you.. Iam in the same boat... I look so totally different everything is out of wack and I just had a wedding as well... my smile was completely affected... yet no work done in that area ... I look years older.. and it pushed my checks south... very tramatic....

Thanks tome , but I did not inject my lips , I had the botox only around my eye's and btween my eyebrow and forhead , plus filer btween my eye brow only , but I dont know why that effect my smile