I got lip filler and regret it. Here's what I wish I knew.

• Beauty Influencer Gisele Ayora told Insider she regrets getting lip filler after complications.
• Ayora got filler injected a total of 3 times to make her lips look right, and it hardened into a lesion.

Gisele Ayora, a New Jersey-based beauty influencer, has naturally full lips, but opted to get lip filler anyway in 2021 to get the look her fellow creators were seemingly obsessed with.

Ayora said she should have never tried to fix what wasn't broken, as a "botched job" left her needing two additional injections to try and fix it, and later gave her a rare lip ulcer.

"I regret everything," Ayora said in an interview with Insider. "I didn't even need this, this wasn't an insecurity to begin with. Now I understand the risk is huge."

While demand for fillers continues to soar, some people say the cosmetic procedure isn't worth it. Blac Chyna said she got rid of her face filler because she felt the overly plump cheeks made her feel like "Saw" character Jigsaw. Courteney Cox called filler her "biggest beauty regret" that left her looking "really strange."

Ayora said she now encourages people interested in fillers to weigh the risks.

"I know it sounds so vain, I'm always thinking about my lips," Ayora said. "That's the thing, at one point I couldn't care less about what anybody was looking at on my face, until I got this done. It made me so insecure."

Complications led to more injections and an ulcer

Having stashed away enough money just as she turned 30, Ayora decided she would get fillers in 2021.

She found a nearby injection clinic operated by two former emergency room doctors after about 20 minutes of online research, and didn't review any before-and-after photos to see if the results match what she expected. "I kind of was like, 'Oh, she's a doctor, she should know what she's doing,'" Ayora said. So she booked an appointment.

While at the clinic, Ayora asked the doctor who would be performing the procedure about lip filler and was told about a $600 sale on the procedure. That's lower than the $648 national average cost, according to RealSelf, though prices for filler are higher in larger cities and depending on the injector's level of expertise.

Without having a conversation about side effects, Ayora's doctor injected "half a syringe," which would be around 0.5 milliliter of filler between her top and bottom lips. Ayora left the clinic 30 minutes later with little idea of what to expect during her healing process, she said.

The recovery period ended up being a doozy. After two days of swelling, a common side effect of lip filler, Ayora noticed "round, raised, red bumps" on the injection sites on her lips. "They looked like bug bites," she added.

The bumps remained on her lips for around a month, and Ayora felt self-conscious when people got close to talk to her. According to NewBeauty Magazine, red bumps can occur after getting fillers and should resolve after a few days to weeks.

The content creator, who has more than 170,000 followers on TikTok, also realized her lips were lopsided; the right side of her mouth was noticeably more plump than the left.

Ayora went back to the clinic two weeks after the initial procedure for her follow-up appointment, and shared her concerns. The doctor attempted to even out her lips by injecting more filler on her left side.

Her problems got worse from there. Ayora's lips remained lopsided, she said, and later a hardened ulcer formed on the inside of her lip. Case reports suggest hard, and sometimes painful, nodular lesions rarely form in areas that receive filler, but no published studies exist on this side effect.

Ayora sent photos of her lesion to the clinic, in emails reviewed by Insider. She said doctors responded over the phone by ensuring her that ulcers are a "normal" side effect, despite the lack of research on this side effect.

The complicated side effects taught Ayora the importance of doing your research

Two weeks later, Ayora went back to the clinic a third time and asked if the doctor could dissolve her filler entirely. "I was freaking out," she said. "I wanted all of my lip filler to be dissolved."

To her dismay, she said the clinic did not offer hyaluronidase, a product that dissolves lip filler. Instead her doctor inserted filler for a third and final time to try to correct the unevenness.

Though her filler had finally evened out, the ulcer inside Ayora's lip remained a nuisance. She visited a dermatologist who treated the ulcer with hyaluronidase to shrink the lesion. Though she wanted to dissolve all her lip filler, the dermatologist said the process could make her lips uneven again, and suggested she wait for the filler to dissolve on its own.

Ayora said she will not get lip filler again, and urges her followers to carefully consider the risks of the procedure.

"It's so important to find a doctor who really puts pride into their work and cares," Ayora said, "so [you] feel safe and understand what could happen before making that decision."