One beauty lover says she saw an allergic reaction to the horror of eyebrow dye turn into a “monster” when her eyebrows are completely parted and then dropped.
Michelle Clarke, 31, of Coventry, West Midlands, said her eyebrows were itchy shortly after shaving and coloring, but she woke up the next morning “crying” and her face was swollen as well.
He claims he had a “near-death experience” later that day when his airways began to close and he went into anaphylactic shock, so he was taken to the emergency room to seek medical attention.
Michelle claims she had an allergic reaction to the dye, but waxing her eyebrows before applying the dye was a big mistake because it opened up her pores so the toxins in the dye could quickly enter her bloodstream.
For a week, he had an “absolutely horrific” experience when his face was so swollen that he “double up”, forcing him to close his eyes and look like an “elephant man.”
Photos show his “angry red” eyebrows were covered with pus before crusting and flaking off completely, exposing the “hot” skin underneath.
Michelle Clarke, 31, of Coventry, West Midlands, said her eyebrows were itchy shortly after she had shaved and dyed, but she woke up the next morning “crying” and her face was also swollen.
Michelle, who was photographed before the treatment, said she did a patch test but only waited an hour for the beautician to see if there was a reaction.
Michelle’s “angry red” eyebrows were covered with pus before crusting and flaking off completely.
After a long six-week recovery period and her eyebrows are starting to grow again, Michelle recently shared her September 2020 ordeal on TikTok as a warning to others.
She wants to raise awareness of the importance of waiting at least 48 hours for patch test results and to let beauticians know the correct treatment order.
Michelle said: “I haven’t had waxy and tinted eyebrows since and never will again.
“Everybody I’ve talked to since then said you have to paint and polish when you wash the paint, but he got it all wrong.
Michelle said she looked like the Elephant Man when her face doubled a week after the treatment.
“I looked like a monster. My eyebrows were red, angry, and very scabies, and they just fell out with pus.
“It left crunchy, blistered skin with a plump skin underneath. It had completely burned the layers of my skin.
“I didn’t want to come out and be looked at. I looked like the Elephant Man because I was so fluffy, grumpy, and gross.
“I was forced home for a good week. It was absolutely terrible.
Michelle said she visited a beautician who had her eyelashes plumped up before, where she offered to wax and dye her eyebrows.
Michelle, who was photographed before the treatment, said waxing her eyebrows before dyeing means her skin is more sensitive and her pores absorb the dye.
She did a patch test and was advised to do the procedure as she did not respond after waiting 45 minutes to an hour while a friend was getting a beauty treatment.
“The night I got them they started getting a little itchy and I said, ‘oh, it might be paint or something.
“I didn’t like it. But when I woke up on Friday morning, my face was so swollen and my eyebrows were crying.
“I was out with my boyfriend and my airways were starting to close, so I was taken to the hospital and they had to give me an injection to reopen my airways and they told me I was in anaphylactic shock.
“I could breathe, it felt like someone was holding me in a really tight bear hug and they were just squeezing, and it just kept getting tighter.
Stating that her eyebrows were on fire and her forehead was burning from the inside, Michelle added that it was impossible to sleep well.
“This was the only moment in my life I was truly afraid of” [I was going to die]Wow, that was my closest death experience.
After being treated in the emergency room, Michelle’s breathing returned to normal after about 20 minutes and she was sent home with a steroid cream.
But his reaction got worse.
Michelle says, “My eyebrows were on fire and my forehead felt like it was burning from the inside.
“They itched a lot and I couldn’t sleep well because I saw pus falling all over my face. It was light yellow and green.
“I had to sleep with cotton pads on my brows and when I tried to remove them the next morning it was back to square one, but I couldn’t physically sleep without something trying to catch all the pus.
There was so much inflammation on her face that Michelle said it was impossible to sleep at night.
“It was only on bare flesh, but at that moment they were also crying of pus.
“It was itchy and sore from the swelling. At one point I even had black eyes from the swelling.
“My face is probably twice as swollen” [its normal size]† At one point my eyes were completely closed, I could still see a little, but the swelling looked like my eyes were completely closed.’
Michelle was returned to the hospital on Monday because her breathing had gotten worse again and her face was even more swollen.
He also went to a doctor and was given a total of antibiotics, steroids and antihistamines to ease his reaction.
After all the brow hairs were gone, painful blisters remained under Michelle.
“She bled for probably two weeks and then fell off. It was quite a long process,” says Michelle.
“The hairs tried to grow back, but every time the crusts fell, the hair fell out too. So for about three or four weeks I didn’t have any eyebrows.
“As a girl, your eyebrows and things like that define you as a character.
“My eyebrows were still open and the reason I did these was to avoid scratching them every day and having the completely opposite effect of getting up and going.
“I had to put cotton pads over my eyes and then put a wool cap over my eyes so no one could see my eyebrows.
“My boyfriend went shopping with me and it looked like that, so I didn’t feel like an idiot.
“If I saw someone like that in a supermarket, I’d look twice, and people did this to me.”
Michelle said she had trouble seeing due to the swelling around her eyes, and it was nearly impossible to sleep because of the itching and pus draining from her face.
Michelle’s eyebrows returned to normal after about 8-10 weeks and now she’s dying to spread the word about her experiences.
Michelle said, “I finally wanted to get them tattooed but I’m still afraid to put something like this on my face because I never want to experience something like that again.
‘I wanted to raise awareness.
“People told me to do it as soon as it happened, but then I didn’t want to go down that road, I just wanted to pack up and get through things.
“I would tell people to make sure the brow specialists know the right procedure and the patch test doesn’t take an hour.
The patch test on the back of my neck also worked, as did my eyebrows.
“So, if he had waited for the suggested 24 to 48 people he would have realized that the dye was too strong, but obviously doing it the wrong way didn’t help.
“That’s why it was so bad, because it was a mix of those two things.”
Source: Daily Mail
