Danniella Westbrook has vowed to pay the £500,000 NHS bill needed for corrective facial surgery following her terrifying procedure in Turkey.
The former EastEnders star admitted that she had taken the trip to the eastern European country for reconstruction surgery after being convinced by a close friend.
The 49-year-old, who has had a lengthy battle with osteoporosis and years of drug addiction, needed the procedure amid her desperate battle to save her face which could collapse completely.
But she was left traumatised following the horrifying operation, which she said was performed without anaesthesia. Danniella was previously quoted the staggering £500,000 fees worth of surgery on the NHS but insists she will foot the bill for the much-needed operations.
She told The Sun : "I was doing it in Liverpool with a professor there. I should have stayed with him but a friend convinced me to go to Turkey. It's my own stupid fault.
"I'm going back to him though but I'm gonna pay for it this time. I'd been quoted £500,000 before, I don't care what it is.
"If I don't have it done, the palate in the back of my mouth will collapse and I'll suffocate to death.
"When I went to Turkey, I could have died. I could have died if someone had just botched it any further. I'm not the youngest person in the world and I haven't been the wellest."
Speaking in an interview with The Sun last week, Danniella said that the surgeon even slapped her during the op and her phone was confiscated by an assistant as she begged for him to stop.
She said she had met with the doctor over Zoom before flying out to Turkey in April, and after undergoing 3D scans on her nose, she was told the corrective surgery was “impossible” due to her osteoporosis.
Danniella was devastated, and said she had "waited five years" for the life-changing surgery, only to be told at the last minute that the operation was not going ahead.
After another consultation, the actress was offered filler in her face and Botox injections to straighten her nose, and agreed to return to see the surgeon - but insisted she hadn’t been told at that point about a thread lift, which is a cosmetic procedure used to tighten and lift the face.
It was during the surprise procedure that the surgeon allegedly slap her as she complained about the amount of pain she was in. The surgeon then began inserting three metal rods into her face.
She said she was stitched back up by his medical assistant, but she was sent home with no pain relief or antibiotics.
*Follow Mirror Celebs on Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter and Facebook .
