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I Was Hospitalised After Getting an Eyelash Tint, and Here's What I Learnt

11/12/2019 - 08:45 AM

I rarely wear makeup. During the week, I'm more inclined to sleep an extra 15 minutes in the morning than put on a full face for work. I have long lashes but they are blond at the tips, which makes them really hard to see if I don't have mascara on. So last week, after I got my brows done and the aesthetician asked me if I would like to get an eyelash tint [1] as well, I said yes.

This seemed like a good idea at the time, but it wasn't. Let me start from the beginning.

Before I got the treatment — which uses a natural dye to make your lashes appear darker for up to six weeks — my aesthetician asked me if I had allergies, and I said I'm only allergic to henna. She then asked if I'd gotten my hair dyed before, to which I said yes. She deemed it safe for me, and I ended up getting the tint. It was a pretty easy and straightforward process. I went home satisfied.

A day passed, and my eyes started getting a little watery, itchy, and heavy. But I look at screens all day long, so I didn't think anything of it. This was the night before Thanksgiving, and I was staying at my best friend's childhood house in Armonk, NY. After a really lousy night of sleep, I woke up with red, watery, puffy eyes. My eyelids were irritated — they hurt, a lot. The moment my friend's mom saw me, her face changed. She immediately gave me an ice pack and some Benadryl. After five hours, I decided to go back to my Manhattan apartment, take a Benadryl or two, and try to sleep it off. I thought this would help, and I would meet my friend's family at Thanksgiving dinner. Well, I never made it out.

Check out what happened, plus a few tips from a doctor, ahead.

A Day After the Lash Tint

The next day, I went to bed thinking the antihistamines I took would work and I would wake up good as new. But eight hours later, I woke up and couldn't open my eyes. That was when I decided to go to the hospital.

The New York-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital doctors were great. They gave me antihistamines like Claritin and Benadryl, steroids to prevent the allergic reaction from coming back, and some antinausea pills to prevent any stomach problems that the steroids might cause. I left the hospital after five hours, with a slightly depuffed face.

3 Days After the Lash Tint

For the last five days, I've been taking one steroid a day, two Benadryls every four hours, and a Claritin two times a day. I've also been nonstop ice-rolling [2] my face. This past week was emotionally scarring, so I talked to dermatologist Rita V. Linkner [3], MD, of Spring Street Dermatology to gather some crucial intel on the allergen in these tints.

"The allergen commonly found in lash tints is the same one that is in henna, paraphenylenediamine," Dr. Linkner said. "This reaction is much more exacerbated when eyelids are involved because eyelid skin harbors a lot of macrophages, which is the skin cell responsible for causing allergic reactions."

According to Dr. Linkner, the eyelid skin is also the thinnest on a woman's body, so any inflammatory reaction is amplified. "Patients will oftentimes require oral prednisone to help mitigate the reaction," she said. "If you were hospitalized then I can only imagine how severe of a reaction you had."

Today, after a full week, my face is finally back to normal. Even though I now know to avoid any hair dyes with paraphenylenediamine, let this be a lesson: it's never a good idea to get an impromptu treatment without actual knowledge of the product ingredients. No beauty treatment is worth a hospital visit.


Source URL
https://www.popsugar.co.uk/beauty/eyelash-tint-allergic-reaction-47001202