A beauty enthusiast claims that a horror-allergic reaction to eyebrow dyeing saw her turn into a “monster” when her eyebrows completely peeled off and then fell off.
Michelle Clarke, 31, from Coventry, West Midlands, said her eyebrows were itchy shortly after she was waxed and tinted, but she woke up the next morning ‘crying’ and her face was swollen too.
She claims she had a “near-death experience” later that day as her airways started to close and she went into anaphylactic shock, so she was rushed to the ER to get medical attention.
Michelle claims she had an allergic reaction to the tint, but waxing her eyebrows before applying the tint was a serious mistake as it opened up her pores for the toxins in the dye to quickly enter her bloodstream.
Over the course of a week, she endured an “absolutely horrible” experience when her face became so swollen that it “doubled” in size — forcing her to close her eyes and make her look like “the elephant man.”
Photos show her ‘red angry’ eyebrows becoming covered in pus before crusting over and falling out completely – exposing the ‘bubbly blistering’ skin underneath.
Michelle Clarke, 31, from Coventry, West Midlands, said her eyebrows were itchy shortly after they were waxed and tinted but she woke up the next morning ‘crying’ and her face was swollen too
Michelle, pictured before the treatment, said she had a patch test but the esthetician only waited about an hour to see if there was a reaction
Michelle’s ‘red angry’ eyebrows got covered in pus before scabs and completely fell out
After a lengthy six-week recovery and with eyebrows now growing back, Michelle recently shared her September 2020 ordeal on TikTok as a warning to others.
She wants to make people aware of the importance of waiting a minimum of 48 hours for the results of a patch test and make sure that estheticians know the correct order of treatments.
Michelle said: ‘I haven’t had my eyebrows waxed and tinted since then and I would never have them again.
“Everyone I’ve talked to since then said you have to paint and then wax when you wash the paint off, but she just did it all the wrong way.
Michelle said she looked like The Elephant Man when her face doubled in size the week after the treatment
‘I looked like a monster. My eyebrows were red, angry and really scabby and just fell off with the pus.
“It left bubbly, blistered skin with fleshy skin underneath. It had completely burnt layers of my skin.
“I didn’t want to go out and be stared at. I looked like The Elephant Man because I was so swollen, scabby and horrible.
‘I was housebound for a good week. It was absolutely horrible.’
Michelle said she visited an esthetician who had previously done her lashes to have them filled in, where she offered to wax and dye her brows.
Michelle, pictured before the treatment, said waxing her eyebrows before tinting meant her skin was more sensitive and her pores were absorbing the dye.
She did a patch test and after waiting about 45 minutes to an hour while a friend had a beauty treatment, she was advised that they should do the procedure as she hadn’t had a reaction.
Michelle said, “The night I had them done they started to itch a little bit and I was just like ‘oh, it could just be the paint or whatever’.
‘I didn’t like it. But when I woke up on Friday morning, my face was much more swollen and my eyebrows were crying.
“I had been out with my boyfriend and my airways had started to close, so I was taken to the hospital and they had to give me an injection to reopen my airways and they said I was in anaphylactic shock.
“I could breathe, it felt like someone was holding me in a really tight bear hug and just squeezing and it just kept getting tighter and tighter.
Michelle said it felt like her eyebrows were on fire and her forehead was burning from within, adding that it was impossible to sleep well
‘That was the only time in my life that I was really afraid of’ [I was going to die]like wow, that was my closest death experience.’
After being treated in the emergency room, Michelle’s breathing returned to normal about 20 minutes later and she was sent home with steroid cream.
But her reaction only got worse.
Michelle said, “It felt like my eyebrows were on fire and my forehead was burning from within.
“They were so itchy and I couldn’t sleep well because I saw all the pus falling all over my face. It was bright yellow and green.
“I had to sleep with cotton pads on my eyebrows and the next morning trying to get them off was back to square one, but I couldn’t physically sleep without something trying to catch all the pus.
There was so much pus all over her face, Michelle said it was impossible to sleep at night
‘It was just on the bare flesh, but at the time they were also crying from the pus.
“It itched and hurt from the swelling. At one point I even got black eyes from the swelling.
‘My face is probably doubly swollen’ [its normal size]† At one point my eyes were completely closed, I could still see a little, but the swelling made it seem like my eyes were completely closed.’
Michelle returned to the hospital on Monday because her breathing had deteriorated again and her face was even more swollen.
She also visited a doctor and was given a total of antibiotics, steroids, and antihistamines to ease her reaction.
After all her eyebrow hair fell out, Michelle was left with blisters of painful flesh underneath
Michelle said: ‘It was probably about two weeks that it pussed, bled and then fell off. It was quite a long process.
“The hairs tried to grow, but every time the scabs fell off, the hairs came off too. So for about three to four weeks I had no eyebrows.
“As a girl, your eyebrows and things like that define you as a character.
“My eyebrows were fair anyway and the reason I had them done was to avoid drawing them up every day and just get up and go, having the totally opposite effect.
“I had to put cotton pads over my eyes and then wear a wool cap over my eyes so that no one could see my eyebrows.
“My boyfriend came shopping with me and looked like this, so I didn’t feel like an idiot.
“If I saw someone like that in a supermarket, I’d look double and that’s what people did to me.”
Michelle said she had trouble seeing because of the swelling around her eyes, and sleeping was nearly impossible because of the itching and pus that ran down her face
Michelle’s eyebrows returned to normal after about eight to 10 weeks and she is now eager to spread the word about her experience.
Michelle said, “Eventually I wanted to get them tattooed, but then again, I’m also scared to put something like that on my face because I’d never want to go through something like that again.
‘I wanted to create awareness.
“People told me to do it as soon as it happened, but I didn’t want to go down that road then, I wanted to recover and get over things.
“I would tell people to make sure they know their eyebrow specialist knows the correct procedure and that a patch test isn’t left on for an hour.
Even the patch test on the back of my neck did exactly the same as my eyebrows.
“So if she had waited for 24 to 48 people recommend she would have noticed that maybe the dye was too strong, but then of course doing it the wrong way didn’t help.
“That’s why it was so bad, because it was a mixture of those two things.”