The boy’s silhouette
I’m Jessica. I’m thirty-one and I live in Belfast. I have always had a flat bottom. No curve, no hip, a straight line in every dress. A BBL was never going to be my operation: I haven’t got spare fat to move. Years of gym, weights, protein. Those hips never arrived. Dresses hung on me as if they belonged to someone else. In the mirror that boy’s silhouette used to floor me.
What was left was an implant. Silicone in the part of you that you sit on. I ran from that for a long time. What if they turn, or drop, and I look lopsided? What if they sit on the sciatic nerve and my legs go numb? What if he touches me and feels hard plastic? Then I got the quotes here. Both were more than I could get my hands on. So I started reading about Turkey. Some of it was women who finally had a shape. Some of it was ugly, uneven photographs. One night I typed the actual question: are buttock implants in Turkey safe? Not how much. Are they safe.
I wrote to Just Clinic Istanbul. I wanted the clinic name next to a named hospital. The file said Just Clinic Istanbul buttock implants beside that hospital. My first message did not mention money. I sent the list: them turning, the sciatic, the plastic feel, and being sent to a hotel on my front. The reply went through every one before anybody mentioned a price. If you found this after asking whether implants in Turkey are safe, I want the two nights on my front and the card in my purse, not a sales page. On the notes they wrote buttock implants Turkey. A candidate guide implants vs fat transfer would have sent me home empty: I had no fat. Buttock implants vs BBL Turkey is silicone versus someone else’s spare tyre. I had neither.
The envelope of muscle
The photographs that stuck were the lopsided ones. One side up, one down. I could not work out how something you sit on stays still. I asked it on the video call. He said that happens when the implant is put just under the skin, in the wrong plane, or when it is too big for the pocket. Mine would go inside the gluteus maximus — intramuscular. “That muscle wraps them like an envelope,” he said. “In there they do not turn and they do not drop.” Months on, they are where they left them. I can find them if I go looking. They have not shifted a millimetre.
I’d read about women with a trapped nerve and a leg pain that does not go. I nearly walked away. He said that is the old, very deep placement, under the muscle, sitting on the path of the nerve. With the intramuscular technique the implant stays higher, away from that path. When I woke and took the first steps I did not have that tug down the leg. That he told me the difference, instead of saying don’t worry, is why I booked.
The first ordinary chair
I pictured an office chair and the rim of the silicone giving me away, as if I were sitting on a ball. They drew it. You sit on the bones below, not on the upper curve. The implant sits higher, inside the muscle, to give shape, not to act as a cushion. “You do not sit on the implant.” That sentence did more than any photograph. It is placement, not a free pass. Gluteal implant sitting restrictions were real: I was on my front, and when sitting had to happen a cushion put the weight on my thighs. When I was allowed back onto an ordinary chair, I did not feel edges. I did not feel a stranger underneath.
The first weeks my bottom was tight — swelling, and muscle holding on. When I ran a hand over it, it felt rock-hard. I wrote in a panic. They said the muscle loosens as it gets used to the implant. By month three that tightness had gone. That is my buttock implants recovery timeline: stone, then firm muscle, not a table of weeks. The silicone they used is a softer kind than the old ones. Now it feels like firm muscle, not stone. He does not guess there is an implant there. Buttock implants before and after Turkey — week one is not a year.
The card in the purse
It sounds small. It sat with me anyway: an emergency jab that punctures the implant. He didn’t laugh at me. Yes — no intramuscular injections in the buttock after this. There are other sites. The shoulder. The thigh. It is a change of place, not a drama. I have it written on a card in my purse, because I am the sort who would forget in A&E.
Two nights on my front
I’d read packages that wake you and put you in a taxi within a few hours, on your front, with a bandage. Doing that night alone made my stomach turn. It didn’t go like that. I came out of theatre and went up to a room on the ward, and I stayed two nights. The nurses came through the small hours. They helped me stay on my front. They checked my blood pressure and the drains. The painkillers went in on time. I never once thought: if I go downhill here, nobody will notice. The surgeon came in the morning. I was in Istanbul seven or eight nights. That was my buttock implants Istanbul stay — not a slogan, the nights until he said I could fly. I did not fly until I’d been back in for a check-up.
When the figure is a fraction of a Belfast quote, the fair question is what they skip. I asked which hospital, by name, and whether it has an A&E. Intramuscular or under the skin. The surgeon’s registration. Who is giving me the anaesthetic. What happens if one needs taking out. Two places sent a gallery. One sent documents and a video call with the person who would operate. I woke up in a proper hospital. I asked for implants. Implants are what were booked, quoted and done. Nobody suggested lipo on the waist or a thigh while I was asleep. No extra on the bill.
The sting on the seam in Belfast
What I kept seeing was me in the flat, a seam that looks angry, and a message that never gets read. The woman who’d answered my first message was still answering months later. The first weeks I sent photographs. One night I felt a sting on the seam and wrote at about ten. She came back later that night after showing the surgeon, and told me that is the wound closing. She was blunt about what not to wait on. A temperature, spreading redness, a leg going numb, pain getting worse — A&E here first, then her. Afterwards. Not instead of.
I’d never been to Istanbul. I don’t have a word of Turkish. I came through arrivals and there was a man holding a board with my name on it. After that a clinic car came for every journey, wide enough that I could lie on my front. I never stood on a pavement trying to flag anyone. The same woman stood with me while he marked the crease between the buttocks, where the scar would sit. She went through the consent line by line, in English, including the sciatic paragraph. When I came round, the first voice I heard said my name and told me it had gone well.
The woman in Leeds
Website write-ups read like adverts to me. I wanted someone who had slept on her front in that hospital and had the same fear of feeling edges. I asked on the first call. They put me through to a woman in Leeds who’d had hers ten months before. I asked about the rims, the sciatic, when the hardness went. She was blunt. The first nights you will hate everyone. Then she said: “In jeans, I look like I always should have looked. He has never guessed.” That is what booked me.
It’s a year on. I have a curve. It looks like mine, not like a costume. The scar sits in the crease where nobody sees it unless they are looking. It wasn’t a miracle. It was implants inside the muscle, two nights on a ward, and people who answered the phone when I was back in Belfast. I can wear a fitted dress without pinning it in my head first. That is a small sentence. It took me years to get to it. Buttock implants Just Clinic Istanbul on the papers means they organised the trip. The name on the consent was the person in theatre.
