The ugly road to beauty

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Treating the wound
She went back to Hernandez, who decided to send her back to his clinic to be checked. If it's an infection, he told her, she needs stronger antibiotics right away. Or she might need more surgery to close the wound.

Lisa dreaded another trip to Nuevo Laredo, but Hernandez insisted it was important.

The visit went poorly. Lisa screamed when a nurse couldn't find a vein to draw blood. She complained that the needles were too large and not modern and thin like the ones in the United States.

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"I do not know how people get down here without friends or reporters and get through it," she said. "If my life weren't at risk here, I would be begging you, 'Please, please, please let's go home now. Screw them.'"

She spent the night at the clinic while lab work was done on her blood. She was sent on her way the next morning with a prescription for more antibiotics, including one that required injection.

She returned to San Antonio and, in near hysteria, went with a reporter to an emergency room to seek treatment.

Cursing Hernandez on the way home from Nuevo Laredo, she vowed never to go back again.

"If I survive this, that's it for me," she said, her eyes still watery from the eye surgery four weeks prior.

She drove to the Veterans Administration hospital in the Medical Center and waited for about two hours in the emergency room before a physician was ready to see her.

The red, puffy lines on her legs and abdomen looked like they were healing just fine, the doctor said. But the leaky patch on her lower back was a problem.

Wrong prescription
He said the antibiotics prescribed in Mexico were wrong for her.

"This antibiotic needs to be injected, not into your skin, but into an IV," he said when he read the Mexican prescription.

He prescribed an oral antibiotic instead and sent her home.

Weeks later, Lisa told the newspaper the wound healed and the scare was over. She said she would return to Hernandez's clinic for cosmetic surgery on her neck, upper chest and lower arms.

Lisa broke off contact with the newspaper last year. But when reached last week, she said she was pleased with her results.

"For the record, I am so happy," she said Friday. "I have never been happier in my life. I would go back to them a million times."

She would not provide further details.

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