A dream family holiday across Asia turned into a life-threatening nightmare for an Australian mother after she underwent cosmetic surgery in Vietnam, spending two weeks in a coma and requiring a £100,000 emergency airlift home.
A Holiday Turned Medical Crisis
Chloe Mowday, a 33-year-old mother-of-three from Western Australia, was travelling through South-East Asia with her young family in November. After visiting Bali, Hong Kong, and Singapore, their adventure came to an abrupt halt in the beachside city of Da Nang. There, Ms Mowday underwent rhinoplasty and blepharoplasty procedures on her nose and eyelids at an unnamed clinic.
She was discharged the morning after the surgery and returned to her hotel. Just hours later, her husband Josh found her unresponsive as her organs began to shut down. She was resuscitated en route to a local hospital, where she spent the next two weeks in a coma. Doctors performed further surgery to remove a spreading infection, but she then developed pneumonia and sepsis, causing significant setbacks.
The Costly Fight for Survival
The family faced immense stress due to language barriers, soaring medical bills, and uncertainty about her care. When doctors advised that her best chance of survival was to return to Australia, they arranged a medical evacuation. Her brother, Rod, took out bank loans to help cover the staggering $125,000 AUD (approximately £65,000) bill for the air ambulance.
Ms Mowday was flown back to Australia just in time for Christmas. She is now awake, talking, smiling, and breathing on her own but remains critically ill in intensive care. "She is doing a little bit better, but she’s still in intensive care and it’s going to be a very long road to recovery," her brother told PerthNow.
A Long Road Ahead and Warnings on Medical Tourism
The family has expressed gratitude to the hospital staff in Vietnam who kept her alive and to the Australian public, who donated over $60,000 AUD towards the evacuation and ongoing treatment. Da Nang is known for its growing cosmetic surgery industry, where procedures cost a fraction of those in Australia. A rhinoplasty there costs around $2,076 AUD, compared to $9,200 AUD in Australia.
Ms Mowday had researched surgery options overseas for almost four years, posting in a cosmetic surgery support group in 2022 for advice. She cited photos of Kylie Jenner as inspiration for her desired results. Her story serves as a stark warning about the potential dangers of pursuing cut-price cosmetic procedures abroad, where aftercare and complications can lead to catastrophic outcomes and enormous unforeseen costs.
