A woman was left fearing for her life after she suffered a horrible allergic reaction to an eyebrow treatment.
Michelle Clarke was rushed to A&E after a visit to a beautician went terribly wrong.
The beauty lover realised something was not right when her eyebrows began to scab over, then fell off, leaving her 'looking like a monster'.
The 31-year-old noticed her eyebrows became itchy shortly after she had them waxed and tinted, but it wasn't until the next morning when she woke up that she found her face had swollen.
And things went from bad to worse when she was rushed to A&E later that day as her airways began to close.
She went into anaphylactic shock, suffering what she termed her closest "death experience".
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She believes her ordeal was caused by an allergic reaction to the tint - made worse by the wax which opened her pores and allowed toxins in the dye to enter her bloodstream quickly.
Thankfully, doctors came to her rescue, but she suffered a six weeks recovery as part of the "absolutely awful" experience back in September 2020.
Now, she has taken to TikTok to raise awareness of the importance of waiting 48 hours for the result of patch tests, and of completing treatments in the correct order.
Michelle said: "Everyone I've spoken to since said that you're supposed to tint and then wax as you get the tint residue off with the wax, but she just completely did it the wrong way.
"My eyebrows were red, angry and really scabby and were just falling off with the puss.
"It was leaving bubbly, blistering skin with fleshy skin underneath. It had completely burned layers of my skin.
"I didn't want to go out and be stared at. I looked like Elephant Man because I was so swollen, scabby and horrible."
She added that she tried the wax and tint after visiting a beautician who had previously treated her eyelashes. While she did complete a patch test before the new treatment, she waited for around 45 minutes to an hour while a friend had a beauty treatment.
She was then advised they'd do the procedure as she hadn't had a reaction. But when she woke up the next day her face had swollen and her eyebrows were "weeping".
After her trip to A&E, Michelle's breathing returned to normal, and she was sent home with steroid cream.
But her reaction only worsened.
Michelle said: "It felt like my eyebrows were on fire and my forehead was burning from the inside out.
"They were so itchy and I couldn't sleep properly because I could see all the puss falling down my face. It was bright yellow and green.
"I was having to sleep with cotton pads on my eyebrows and then trying to get them off the next morning was going back to square one again, but I couldn't physically sleep without anything trying to catch all the puss. It was just down to the bare flesh."
She later had to visit a doctor and return to the hospital once more. "It was probably about two weeks it was pussing, bleeding and then falling off. It was quite a long process," added Michelle.
"So for about three to four weeks I had no eyebrows. I had to put cotton pads over my eyes and then wear a woolly hat right down to over my eyes so that nobody could see my eyebrows," she added.
Fortunately, Michelle's eyebrows returned to normal after around after eight to ten weeks.
But she has vowed never to have her eyebrows waxed and tinted again.
For anyone interested in the treatment, she advised: "I'd tell people to ensure that they know that their eyebrow practitioner knows the correct procedure and that a patch test isn't left on for an hour.
"Even the patch test at the back of my neck did exactly the same as my eyebrows did.
"So if she had waited for 24 to 48 that people recommend, she would have noticed that maybe the dye was too strong, but then to obviously do it the wrong way as well didn't help.
"That's why it was so bad as it was a mixture of both of those things."
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