Warning: The article contains graphic images
A fitness influencer has said her body ‘started eating itself alive’ after 60 fat-burning injections.
Beatriz Amma says she already works hard to stay in shape and loves showing off her bikini body, with dreams of becoming an online fitness guru when she moves to Los Angeles, California, USA in February 2021.
The 23-year-old decided to go to a spa, paying $800 for injections of vitamin B12 mixed with vitamin C and deoxycholic acid, a popular ‘fat dissolver’.
Beatriz received approximately 60 painless injections, ten in each arm, 20 in her back and 20 in her stomach, but resulted in nausea, chills and fever overnight.
Scars soon began to form where the injections were given and soon his ‘rotting’ skin began to ‘eat him alive’, after which he was taken to hospital, believing he was ‘going to die’.
Doctors discovered that deoxycholic acid had not been injected properly and had developed necrosis, believed to have led to ‘subcutaneous mycobacterial abscess’ (flesh-eating skin disease).
Beatriz said: “My whole body started eating itself alive.
“My co-worker saw this and said, ‘this scares me’ and let me stay at her house with her husband and two kids to look after me.
“He had only known me for two months, but he took me into his home and let me sleep in their bed while my skin exploded and ate itself.
“At that time, I was rotting in bed. I couldn’t even put on clothes. I needed help to go to the toilet. I needed help to take a shower and change my clothes.
“I needed help with every little thing we take for granted in everyday life.”
After staying with her colleague for two weeks, Beatriz was admitted to the hospital emergency room overnight; She was in so much pain that she thought she was going to die.
“One night, I woke up at 3 a.m. in tears and thought, ‘I need to go to the emergency room,'” Beatriz said.
“The pain was excruciating. The infection was everywhere.”
Doctors later discovered he had flesh-eating skin disease and began an aggressive treatment plan; this plan resulted in him being hospitalized from May 2021 to September 2021.
By March 2022, all of Beatriz’s wounds had healed, but she continued to use IV antibiotics for six hours a day.
Although he switched to oral antibiotics in September 2022 and stopped them completely in February this year, he had to restart treatment in July due to a relapse of the disease.
“I’m in third grade and it’s still not over,” he said of his illness.
“I never would have thought that something so simple could almost take my life and leave me still fighting for my life.”
