Dying for the Promise of Perfection
Lying in agony on an operating table, Lisa Espinosa, 43, was certain she was minutes away from death. The promise of inexpensive cosmetic surgery lured her to the Dominican Republic in April 2004 where a physician in a makeshift operating room performed breast augmentation surgery, a tummy tuck, and liposuction, during which Espinosa contracted a virulent infection. Instead of recovering, the feverish and seriously ill Espinosa, a clinical grant manager of infectious diseases at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, was told she would die if she didn’t get a blood transfusion.
