‘My old face was removed and rebuilt from a cow’ says Loose Women’s Katie Piper as she opens up on painful skin surgery
LOOSE Women star Katie Piper has revealed the secrets behind her pioneering skin graft surgery after her devastating acid attack.
The inspirational presenter, 38, has told her her ‘old face’ was ‘removed’ and she had a new one made from parts of a cow.
Speaking to Lorraine Kelly and her daughter Rosie Smith on their What If? podcast, Katie detailed the aftermath of the 2008 acid attack organised by her ex boyfriend.
The mum of two explained: “My burn went through the muscle and down to the skeleton, so it was a very, very deep burn.
“Because it’s a corrosive substance, you think with fire you can put it out and maybe minimise the damage, but with me all four layers of the skin were destroyed.
“This foundation is made from collagen and elastin taken from a cow. Queue all the moody cow jokes! My face is made out of a cow,” she laughed.
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Katie, who has landed her own ITV breakfast show, went on to detail how her ‘old’ face had to be ‘removed’ before it could be reconstructed by skilled surgeons.
She recalled: “What I had to do was have all of my old face removed because the tissue was dead and would have gotten infected.
“They had to start from the beginning with a man-made dermal substitute. I always think of the analogy of a house, when you get the foundations before you get the bricks and the scaffolding.”
Doctors took a large skin graft from the middle of her back to her bottom, with Katie jokingly pointing out that she “never realised how hairy her bum was” until the skin was used to cover her face and chest.
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Katie also told Lorraine and Rosie that her nose was built from her upper right rib, her eyelids from her groin and she had hair transplants to create her eyebrows.
Earlier this year the former model revealed that her eldest daughter did not want her to kiss her goodnight because she looked “scary”.
Katie — who had 300 operations since her attack — said she cried after seven-year-old Belle said she was frightened by her.
But Katie, who also has daughter Penelope, four, said it was “normal”.
She added: “It was quite sad when I was having some eye surgery and my eldest was like, ‘I don’t really want you to kiss me goodnight, I think you’re scary’.
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“And of course, I had a little cry in the bathroom because I was like ‘oh god this is where we are at.’
“But actually, I have to allow her to feel like that because it’s normal.”