In the clinic where my sister died there were no nurses and there were serious failures in resuscitation
Paola Portilla breaks down crying on the other end of the phone. It has only been a week since the death of her best friend, Arelis Cabeza, 38, who died in the early hours of Friday, January 21, hours after undergoing plastic surgery with Dr. Yesid Martínez Díaz, in a clinic north of Bogota. Arelis left behind two broken parents and a nine-year-old son who still doesn't understand why her mom hasn't come home. Daniel Cabeza, her younger brother, denounces negligence and irregularities in Martínez's medical practices.
"When my sister died, there were no nurses in the clinic and there were serious failures in resuscitation." Daniel explains that the person who tried to prevent Arelis's death was a friend of hers who had accompanied her to the surgery and not Dr. Yesid. “People who were there tell me that the surgeon was in shock, he didn't know how to react and it was up to my sister's friend to do the resuscitation until the ambulance arrived. Also, the teams were far away, messy and incomplete.”
Arelis was a passionate fan of Independiente Santa Fe, she had studied industrial engineering and had been working at Invías for several years. Paola remembers that her friend loved to eat pizza and prepare rice, steak and beans. “Arelis was like my sister. She always had a happy time when we met”, she says, “she was a very good woman, with a lot of vitality. She didn't deserve an ending like that."
While the Prosecutor's Office and Legal Medicine resolve the exact causes of death, the Bogotá Health Secretariat decided to close the operating rooms of Dr. Martínez's clinic for alleged breaches of the "standards of human talent, infrastructure, staffing, interdependence of services and poor handling in the clinical history. The Secretary sent copies of the case to the Court of Medical Ethics to investigate the doctor. In the coming days, the Court will have to decide whether or not the surgeon can continue to operate and what sanctions will be imposed.
In an interview with this newspaper, Yesid Martínez insists that he followed the appropriate procedures and affirms that he has nothing to regret. "The surgeon for whom a patient does not have complications is because he has never operated," he explains, and continues: "As a doctor, you provide the surgery and the patient provides the recovery." Martínez assures that Arelis came out of the operation well and that she does not understand what happened: "The human body is a box of surprises." When asked why the clinic did not have the necessary equipment and personnel to deal with an emergency like this, Martínez replies: “You never think that something like this will happen, she was already there to discharge him. I told the nurse who assisted me to leave because I didn't think this would happen. I am not God to know what will happen next.
Arelis's family and friends hope that justice will determine the doctor's responsibility in her death and explain that in these days of mourning they have received many complaints from other women victims of Dr. Martínez's bad practices, who have decided to tell their stories. and expose her wounds to prevent what happened to Arelis from happening again. The Spectator spoke with some of them.
Luz Estela Botero, 60 years old, liposculpture
My horror story began on January 4, 2020 at the Higea clinic in Cartagena. Dr. Martínez rented an operating room and operated on me. I came out in a lot of pain, but stable. He told me that in three days he would make an appointment for me to check up. It never came. The skin on my stomach began to turn black, black, as if burned. The man called me to tell me that it was my fault. After sending him pictures and begging him he came to see me and said that something had gone wrong, and that he would do another surgery to remove the damaged skin. On January 15 he operated on me again. I had to stop working because I couldn't move, he had to look for a permanent nurse because of the pain. She uncovered my wound to see how it was healing. Oh surprise, she had removed a slice from my stomach and it was super infected. I started crying, screaming, I was devastated, I almost fainted. I consulted other doctors and they told me: "Who is this slaughterer, how can he think of doing that?" He cried and cried, and he just said it was my fault.
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When my brothers saw me in such a bad way, they told me to press for the money to be returned to me. Dr. Martínez told me that he would not give me the money, but he offered me another surgery for January 31 with the idea of fixing what had gone wrong. I didn't know what else to do. I had two options: look this horrible and lose the money or trust him again. I was wrong. He operated on me again. He did three surgeries on the same part of my body in less than a month. He said that my skin was going to be revitalized, that that was nothing, that he would fix it, that I should be calm. He convinced me, but it was a lie. Also, in the first surgery he had told me that he would give me the repair of my double chin. When I removed the stitches he was horrible, with a huge scar on his face, much worse than before.
Coming out of the last surgery I was running out of oxygen. One of the nurses at the clinic helped me. I owe him my life. The gentleman did not appear again. He left me like a badly sewn rag doll. It was a horrible few months, I was shattered inside and out. I got depressed. I had spent all my savings and had become horrible and sick. I cried every day. It was so sad that I didn't even have the strength to report it. I felt ashamed. With the death of Arelis, there are many victims who are now going to denounce him so that something like this never happens to anyone again.
Two years after the surgeries I can't use the stove, I can't wash clothes, I can't bend over, I can't push, I can't work much, I can't even pick up a strong mop because it hurts too much. And my stomach, it's horrible. The scar is very bad. I also had a very ugly line on my jowls that is spreading across my face. I thank God that I am alive.
Ayda Arellano, 48 years old, rhinoplasty
Before Arelis died, he had already reported this man to the Ministry of Health for negligence and to the Prosecutor's Office for personal injury. I have been with this case for several months, trying to prevent what finally happened from happening. It all started in August 2021. I consulted him to have a rhinoplasty. I told him that he had to think about it, because he didn't have the money. A few weeks passed and the man called me by video call. He was lying on his bed, as if he was talking to his sister or his friend, not a patient. He told me that if I had surgery with him he would give me three “little gifts”: the facelift, which is like stretching the edges of the face; a filling in the expression lines with my own fat, and, in addition, a double chin fix. He charged me $11 million for everything. It was a good price, and he convinced me. I thought he was going to be left with a divine face. A few days later he was already in the clinic. The operation lasted one hour and forty-five minutes. Very little time for the four procedures he had promised me.
The days of recovery passed, but my nose was worse than before. He removed a bone from my nose, left it crooked, one nostril was bigger than another. He told me that it was normal and that it was fixed with massages. He made them for me himself, but nothing changed. The guy does not wear a mask, he spit out all the saliva while he treated me. The first days I trusted. He believed his lies, because in the midst of ignorance one becomes very fragile, when you don't have the information or the expertise you are very vulnerable. She lasted several weeks with the massages and nothing changed.
I left a control appointment crying. He told me: "Why are you crying if I'm going to do the retouching, don't worry". I had had four operations and all four had turned out badly. My face was irregular from one side to the other, I was left with a bulge on my right cheek, a crooked nose, an incision in my jowls, a horrible cut. He offered me surgery on December 11, but I told him I didn't know, that he was afraid and that I had no more money. When I was deciding I found Luz Estela, the lady who lives in Cartagena, online. She showed me how her stomach was and I decided not to go back to Dr. Martinez.
Johana Ruiz, 28 years old, liposculpture
I had surgery with Yesid Martínez for the first time in January 2020. I looked for him on social media and he didn't have any bad comments, now I know he deletes them all. He did liposculpture on me, which consisted of removing fat from my arms, legs, and abdomen. Also, he injected fat into my tail. Everything was a disaster. Before the surgery, the doctor was super insistent on putting fat on my breasts. I consulted other surgeons and they told me that they did not do that because he had not been studied. That's where my anguish began, my mistrust.
The day of the operation they made me wait a long time because there were two women who had already had surgery with him and were dissatisfied with the results. Now I realize that this is his modus operandi. He always leaves you with something wrong, he offers to fix it for you and you have to pay him again. When they put me in the operating room I realized that he was bloody and dirty. He grossed me out. Also, the sheets were old and ugly, they looked used. There the fear multiplied. I thought of my son and said: “I am not going to have surgery”. I started crying and told the nurse that I was panicking, that she didn't want me to die and to call the doctor. He told me that if he wanted he wouldn't operate on me, but that he couldn't pay me back. In the end I accepted, he had paid more than $10 million, but it was the worst mistake of my life. I woke up from the anesthesia crying, disoriented, unable to breathe properly, but at least I was alive.
I got home and passed out. A few days after the surgery I started to get some horrible lumps and lines on my abdomen. He said that it was normal and that he had to massage me for that to change. I spent nine months getting massages and nothing was fixed. I spent a lot of money on it. I consulted with other surgeons and they said that he had used a bad technique and no one dared to operate on me again. After insisting a lot that the surgery had not gone well, he agreed and offered to operate again. He charged me a percentage of the procedure. The second surgery was in September, in the middle of the pandemic. It bothered me that he didn't wear a mask. In the end, I was worse, my stomach had not improved and I had horrible holes in my legs.
I touch my legs and feel a deep emptiness. In addition, I began to feel very strong pains and bumps, which I still have. As soon as I saw myself in a mirror I felt very bad and I thought: this is how I am, I will never undergo surgery again. I am very afraid of that man, every time I touch my body I remember him, I would like to forget him, but it is impossible. It's like torture.
* If you have been a victim of Dr. Yesid Martínez or other plastic surgeons, write to us at jmhernandez@elespectador.com.
