Kerry Katona is to undergo surgery to save her nose, after doctors warned her that it is “collapsing” due to years of drug use.
Taking to Instagram last week, the former Atomic Kitten star opened up about the emotional moment the operation – which involves taking a piece of her rib to rebuild her septum – was recommended.
“So I have damaged my nose from doing drugs,” she told her followers. “[The doctor] went, ‘Your nose is collapsing’. So he said, ‘Do you want us to fix it for you?’ And I started crying because it’s a massive 360 from where I was to where I am now. And I think, ‘Wow wow wow, OK I’ll get it fixed’.”
Speaking exclusively to OK!, Kerry, 43, revealed how she previously put off having a nose job, saying the fear of it collapsing deterred her from ever taking drugs again.
“I got offered to get it fixed years ago and said I didn’t want it,” she told us. “When they asked why, I said, ‘It’s a reminder to myself that if I ever touched a line of coke again, it could all collapse’.”
Kerry was visiting Pall Mall Medical for a consultation about a potential eye lift when a doctor told her that her nose is collapsing and raised the topic of surgery.
“I actually have a hole in the middle of my nose from when I was doing all the cocaine,” she explained. “It softened the cartilage.”
The mum-of-five has been clean from drugs for over a decade, but has bravely spoken out about her past addictions, which spiralled during her marriage to ex-husband Mark Croft.
“Our relationship was just about coke,” she said after their split. “We’d have three-day sessions and not eat.”
Kerry and taxi driver Mark – who is dad to her children Heidi, 16, and Max, 15 – were married from 2007 to 2011. But during the relationship, 2004 I’m A Celeb… winner Kerry went on a downward spiral, using drugs as a way to get by.
“I was using drugs as a coping mechanism and I don’t regret it,” she said last year. “I’ve had many good times on drugs. I can’t regret it. I’ve got to accept it and move on from it. It is what it is. There are no mistakes, only lessons.”
The star now says that it was the people she was hanging out with, rather than the drugs themselves, that were the problem.
“It wasn’t that I even needed that reminder not to do drugs, because walking away from cocaine wasn’t a problem – it was walking away from the people,” she said. “That was my problem. To walk away from the people whom I thought I loved was hard.
“Sometimes I think, ‘God, what would have happened to me If I hadn’t become who I am now?’. Even if it almost did kill me, I would’ve died so much sooner if I hadn’t stopped.”
Now in a loving relationship with fiancé Ryan Mahoney, Kerry – who is also mum to Molly, 22, Lilly-Sue, 20, and DJ, nine – is proud she managed to ditch cocaine, which she once famously described as her “best friend”.
But she admits looking back on her past can be tough. “It makes me emotional because I could’ve looked so different and been in a different place if I hadn’t stopped the drugs,” she said.
Kerry’s nose procedure will be carried out in conjunction with an eye lift and will take a whopping eight hours to complete. Having steered clear of surgery on her face in the past, the star admits she’s concerned.
“I’m so scared,” she said last week. “They have to take a piece of rib from my ribcage and put it in my nose. [The doctor] said that the older you get, the more your nose goes like that anyway, so this will fix it. It’s not a vanity thing at all – it’s a health thing because if I don’t have it done, it could collapse.
"I’ve never thought about getting anything done to my face drastically, only subtle things. I’m too scared to ruin my face. I’m even nervous about the eye lift that I want!”
While the prospect of going under the knife is scary, it’s something Kerry is ready for after being sober for almost 14 years. She says, “I’m so proud of myself for becoming who I am now. It could have gone so differently.”
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