She was a glamorous model who lived a life of luxury — until her face was ravaged by flesh-eating bacteria. Alisa Kazmina had the world at her feet until her immune system turned against her and her nose, horrifyingly, started to rot away. The condition, necrosis, had such an impact that within a year there was a gaping black hole where her nose once was — and it was getting bigger and eating into the rest of her face.
Kazmina’s ordeal started when she noticed her nose starting to sag in 2020. But she was still getting over her divorce to Russian and Arsenal soccer star husband Andrey Arshavin, whom she wed in 2016 and split from in 2019, and didn’t get the proper medical treatment. Instead, she went to a cosmetic specialist who treated it as an infection.
Of course, the hole grew ever bigger until the once-bubbly Kazmina hid herself away from the public eye. By May 2020, non-cosmetic doctors diagnosed her with the autoimmune disease — and had to act quickly because by then the necrosis was just millimetres away from her brain. “I had an operation to sanitise the necrosis,” Kazmina, who has come out to reveal her ordeal, said.
“It was an emergency, the clock was ticking. The destruction was up to the sphenoid sinuses, almost to the brain.” While doctors were able to save her life, the five-hour surgery left her almost unrecognisable.
Kazmina’s face was a mess, with a bit of knobbly skin and gristle and a hole left to represent her nose. “My beautiful fac.