Lower Body Lift Gone VERY Wrong in Tijuana with Dr Cardenas

Update:
I am still going to the wound care clinic to recover from the life threatening antibiotic resistant infection I received while in the care of Dra Carmina Cardenas at Beauty Enhance Recovery Facility in Tijuana, Mexico, in December 2020, I will need to undergo skin grafting and more surgery to repair the damage the necrosis and emergency surgery I had to have when I got home from Mexico from her facility, to save my life. I keep thinking If I had caught this earlier, I might not have got as sick and had as much damage but it was at Dr Carmina Cardenas suggestion That I NOT go to the local hospital but instead she said it would be fine and to get on an airplane, 2 flights, with a high fever and an infection with pus spilling it if my back .... during Covid....to return to her facility from Florida to Mexico.... was her only option, she told me I would be fine and it would all be ok, and to sit on the toilet and milk the gushing pus out of my incision in my back .... She was full of it!! That’s a crazy suggestion as sick as I was!! Thank god I did not listen to her poor advice and I DID go to my hospital when I did because it saved my life yet I still have this horrific outcome which has caused so much damage, pain, scar tissue and destruction to my body on top of the scar from the original lower body lift surgery scars and mounding hospital bills from the emergency room, blood transfusions, almost 2 week hospital stay, home health care and now weekly wound care visits from the sickness I got from her facility in Mexico. She was expensive to begin with for what I got, but this has even made it even less worth it, financially and the toll on my body!
I had originally trusted her and for several days when I got home did Not go to the hospital because she told me Not to and it would be ok! She was way wrong!
I will say I do have my do life, thanks to the doctors in the USA who saved my life from this ordeal after returning home from Mexico.
I find it very sad she goes on here in the comments of my review to defend herself, which is extremely narcissistic, this is how she behaved once she realized when I was in her recovery house when I was still in Mexico and she personally saw the necrosis before I left .... then when I got home a few days later and so life threatening sick, but sadly the truth hurts sometimes and if it reflects unfavorable, that’s the truth I am sharing because the truth needs to be told not covered up and I am still Recovering from this awful ordeal.
I am still a major advocate of plastic surgery and body goals .....but I cannot in good Faith recommend this doctor to anyone, I do not care how good at surgery she may or may not be because the caring for the patient after or when things go wrong part is where she Lacks and has failed ... especially when all of her comments are very self serving, defensive, not exactly true and not one shred of concern for the MESS I’m dealing with of my body, months later in the aftermath of surgery at her facility! I sadly see on here and her Google reviews where others have seen this behavior from her when they also had major complications.
I am having lots of pain from where the infection has caused major scar tissue and damage to my body in my buttocks, back, hips, torso.... my wound care physician, who is caring for me now, said it will be years of pain and healing from the additional scar tissue from the infection because it is hard, thick and my whole middle body cavity was filled with infection that was spreading throughout my body that had me hospitalized in the Trauma center at my local hospital once I returned home from surgery with Dr Carmina Cardenas in Tijuana, Mexico, ......just know the risks!!

So Dr Carmina Cardenas is now going around doing “damage control” to alllll the reviews against her of unhappy and patients who got sick..... Dr Cardenas needs to understand that sadly not all if her patients procedures turn out ok, ....in fact there have been many instances which are detailed in various places online, ....and while most patients should be ok, you cannot ignore these patients who have had a negative experience and dismiss as a smear campaign as she is trying to say... it’s actually patients who have been hurt or got sick from her facility during her care and surgery with her and want their voices heard. So she can go on here all day long and rebuttal and do her best to cover this up, but people got sick and I have been in contact with other patients during my stay who got sick and look thru her reviews here, Google, Yelp, Facebook and other sources and people have been sick at her facility and you cannot cover up the voices of those who are just trying to warn others of these horrible aftermath issues that have occurred and rather than Dr Carmina Cardenas helping those people during their need in a satisfactory way so there is no negative reviews, sadly, time and time again you read reviews where the patient did not receive help or her answer was to “cover it up” or respond to downplay incident, or offer patients return to her facility sick (im still stunned she wold demand patients return on airplanes during Covid to her facility with high fevers and infections) as she has done here in the comments. The compassion and empathy is clearly missing!
I am still going thru wound care recovery from the massive infection and necrosis I got from my surgery with Dr Carmina Cardenas as are the other patients who got sick during the same time from her facility.... she cannot cover up these facts.

Epic Fail Experience....
I have had multiple cosmetic surgery procedures they doctors in the United States in my local area and I am highly satisfied with those procedures and I had no issues at all and any little bumps in the road I did have the doctors were very swift to make sure that I was well taken care of and safe but unfortunately my experience with Dr. Carmina Cardenas in Tijuana Mexico was not one of those experiences and went very poorly.
On December 17, 2020 I had a lower body lift procedure with Dr. Carmina Cardenas which was to consist of a tummy tuck, thigh lift, public lift, butt lift and fat transfer. She calls this procedure her royal lower body lift package. I was so excited for this and was eager to achieve my body goals as an advocate of cosmetic plastic surgery.
I did many consultations locally and online and decided to to go with Dr Cardenas so I could do multiple procedures as she had packages on her website. I paid and did the virtual consultation, she seemed very confident, it seemed like this was a good thing. I booked and paid for my procedure in full as well as a package of lymphatic massages during my stay at her recovery facility in Tijuana, Mexico. I was given a vigorous list of items to do before coming for surgery: Covid tests, MRSA tests, full blood panel, my local physician physical and had to sign off.... basically I had to be in good health going to do surgery with Dr. Carmina Cardenas or it was a No-go. I came to her in optimal health with perfect levels and ready to go!!
I got to Mexico on December 16, 2020, Checked into the Beauty Enhance Recovery Facility which she owns and operates and got settled in. My surgery was December 17, 2020 at CER Hospital, where I stayed 1 night, then back to the recovery facility. Once back at the recovery facility after surgery with an epidural to control the pain, I got sleep and then started recovery. Since I had an epidural, I was able to walk freely thru the facility and met the other patients. I will say the staff do seem to work very hard and are very friendly.
About day 5 or 6 of my recovery when I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror, I saw an area on my butt at the Incision line that was completely black and I asked the nurse as I was getting dressed what it was and she told me it was a bruise and I told her no, I had not noticed it before and it did not look like a bruise. She took a picture of it for me So I could see it better and up close and with my medical knowledge since I have worked in around the medical facility for years, I noticed it look like necrosis, dead tissue, and I asked the nurse to call the doctor at once. Dr. Carmina Cardenas came to the facility that evening to look at it and she said that it would be fine and it will “peel off” within a week. I told her it looked like necrosis and she told me no that it would be fine and will go away in a few days. She told me not to worry about it it! Even though I had my suspicions, she was my physician and I had trusted her because I did go there based on trust but I had a feeling that something was NOT right.
As a few days went on, it started to get worse and bigger. I kept telling her every single day I’m not comfortable with this and to shut me up, she put stickers on it to put blood supply on the area just in case it was necrosis, but she told me that probably was not necrosis and it will peel off in a few days. It started to get worse and red around it with extreme heat. The night before I was leaving to come home back to the United States, she looked at it and I told her that this was not good.
By the time my epidural for pain had worn off after from my flight from Mexico to Florida, I was in excruciating pain, extremely pillowed out and swollen up my back and my hips, bright streaked red, fever of 102. I was very very sick, pale and weak. I had large amounts of pus coming out of my back from the epidural hole. The necrosis was worse. I called her right away and she told me to Milk the pus out of my body and it would be fine, it was normal, will go way and no worries. She told me it was extra fat from my fat transfer trying to get it self out of my body. I wasn’t sure whether I believed her or not as I know fever and pus is BAD but I decided to milk it for a day. I then felt more sick and decided to seek the advice of my local physician whom I met with the next day to have a look and at one glance was told this is NOT normal. I went to the emergency room in my local town, I told Dr Carmina Cardenas I was going there and she told me to not go to the local emergency room but instead board a plane and come back to Mexico. I told her I was extremely sick and about my condition with pus, High fever, weak and she insisted I NOT go to the emergency room but instead board a plane in Florida for a trip back to Mexico. Now why would you have a patient fly with a HIGH fever, pus oozing out of her body, weak, in the condition I was in? During Covid? How was I going to pass thru TSA thru the airport with a fever? Why would you bring a sick patient back to your facility with well patients when they cold easily go to their local hospital, in their home town immediately and seek help??? Crazy request!!! She basically told me this was the only way she'd help me....
I went to my local emergency room which seems like the logical choice and As it turns out I had a MAJOR bacterial infection in my whole back, hips and buttocks, the kind consistent with a medical facility and unclean conditions. As it turns out, several other patients who had their surgery and stayed at the recovery facility Beauty Enhance that the doctor owns were also sick at local hospitals with the same type of bacterial infection. Coincidence? Probably not! Dr Carmina Cardenas said we all must have had outside or preexisting conditions which caused this, ....she took NO responsibility and “patient shamed” us. She made a video during this time and posted on her page trying to cover up this incident and all new protocols she immediately wanted done for her facility and all these new rules but still assumed no liability. Remember, we all had to come to her with a major clean Bill of HEALTH in order for her to operate so we were healthy until we came to her facility!
I ALSO found out my hemoglobin was extremely low and I was in desperate need of blood transfusions which is an explanation as to why my blood pressure was so low because there was NO BLOOD in my body which she did not mention at all to me until after surgery in Mexico so she let me leave with dangerous amounts of blood in my body. I also left her facility without being given any antibiotic or any sort of pain medication other than Tylenol type medicine.
Also any medications I was given when I left her facility were basically empty boxes with one or two doses left which were the medications that I had been given while I was in her facility so I took home the leftovers rather than giving fresh medication that would have controlled any sort of pain which Infound odd.
The night I went to the local emergency room in my town it turned out I desperately needed emergency trauma surgery at 2o’clock in the morning at a level one trauma center in Orlando, Florida to remove the necrosis that was on my body, which I showed her before I left her Beauty Enhance Recovery facility. I actually had it in several spots so I had to open wounds because they had to cut it out of my body so big and deep and to allow the infection which had consumed my whole mid-section of my body, back, buttocks and hips to drain. I was in the hospital for nine extra days after the several days in the emergency room and trauma department trying to get the bacterial infection destroyed out of my body which had to go through many different types of antibiotics to find one to kill it or a combination of several. This is a very painful process because many of these medications I was either allergic to as it turns out or did not kill the infection and it got worse before it got better and this was a very scary time as the infection was invading different parts of my body and could have very easily got into my bloodstream or my vital organs.
If I had listened to Dr. Carmina Cardenas and gone back to Mexico, I don’t know what would have happened or if I had waited and done as she told me and “everything was fine” and waited I could have potentially gotten 10 times worse or I could have died. she never told me to seek immediate attention until I insisted to do so. It was ME that suggested that I go get antibiotics to HER.
while I was in Mexico at the recovery facility and we kept in contact. 3 of us Who were there at the same time were sick from the same type of bacterial infection and all had very similar symptoms and outcomes and all ended up in the hospital once we came home from Tijuana Mexico in our local towns. We all asked Dr. Carmina Cardenas for guidance as we were all sick with similar symptoms and her same advice was for us to come back to Mexico while we were sick.
I am still dealing with going to wound care facility several times a week with open wounds on my body that cannot be sewn up as a must close from the inside out and this will take months of recovery. I was told by Dr. Carmina Cardenas not to go to American doctors because they were crazy and biased to Mexican doctors. When I went to the emergency room and the trauma unit and they wanted to know what had happened so they could put together my medical care. I told them I had been to Mexico for plastic surgery and not one doctor gave me a bad look or was unkind about it as she suggested they would be. This would make me draw the conclusion that she wanted me to be afraid to go seek local assistance from American doctors to keep this under wraps and to shut me up when in fact it was the American doctors who save me from this extremely dangerous situation and I am eternally grateful for them doing so.
I am a major advocate of plastic surgery still to this day and achieving body goals but do keep in mind infections or bumps in the road can always happen no matter where you go for surgery or any type of surgery in the United States or overseas, it happens. Just hope you can count on your physician to have your back if you run into any sort of problem or dangerous situation because unfortunately I do not feel that this doctor had my best interest at heart other than the bare minimum and try to minimize the situation and it really seemed like her reputation was the only thing she was worried about maintaining while I was in dire need of medical attention from an outcome that stemmed from her facility. This has cost me time out of work and financial loss and money out of pocket for medical Care on top of the cost of surgery. This has also caused me trauma, Anxiety and sadness that I never experienced before I went to her facility and have been through this. I will say to those that have had surgery by her or any other doctor and had zero complications but that’s fantastic and that is how it is supposed to go and pray to God you never have to go through this type of experience because just know that this can happen.