This will shock You..
Three months before her wedding day, Louise Jackson booked into a salon for a set of eyelash extensions.
This is a process where individual synthetic lashes are glued onto your own, promising a lash- boosting effect lasting up to six weeks.
Louise had never had the treatment before, but this was a trial run for the longer, fuller lashes she hoped would add a bit of glamour to her big day.
Painful: Sarah Fletcher's sore eyes after lash extensions
As Sarah is today
Painful: Sarah Fletcher’s sore eyes after lash extensions. Right: As she is today
The salon she visited in Gloucester specialised in these kinds of extensions and Louise was excited as she lay back waiting for the therapist to work her magic.
‘After half an hour she told me to open my eyes and look in the mirror,’ says Louise, 28, a hairdresser from Bexley, Kent.
‘But I couldn’t – they were stuck together. I told her and she said: “I’ll just get some tweezers.”
‘I thought that a couple of the lashes must have got stuck, but as she prised my eyes apart I could feel my skin being pulled – my eyelids were stuck together.
‘I screamed with the pain. When she finally prised my eyes open, I looked in the mirror and could see that dozens of my own lashes had been pulled out in the process.
‘There were gaps on the upper and lower lids.
‘I started crying and felt as if I was having a panic attack. I refused to pay and left in flood of tears, with the glue still burning my eyes.’
Louise phoned a beautician friend: ‘She told me to try to remove the glue and false lashes with baby oil, but they didn’t budge. My eyes just got more sore and even puffier.’
In desperation, Louise – now married to Mark, who works for Royal Mail – went to the A&E department at Stroud General Hospital. Doctors were shocked by what they saw.
‘They told me it looked as if the salon had used super-glue, but they couldn’t take it off because they said further chemicals would irritate my eyes even more.
‘They told me my eyeball had been scratched by the tweezers, but all I could do was wait for the lashes to fall out and for my eyes to calm down. They said it would take a couple of weeks.
‘I was so upset and worried that they wouldn’t get better before my wedding. I picked off the lashes and glue, bit by bit, every day for the next week. It was agony,’ she says.
‘Even though the salon specialised in brows and lashes, I don’t think the therapist had a clue what she was doing. Friends said I should take legal action, but I couldn’t face it. I have since found out the salon closed. I’m not surprised.’
Swollen: Melanie Beck after a bad reaction to eyelash glue
Melanie now
Before and after: Melanie Beck after a bad reaction to eyelash glue, and Melanie now
Louise’s case is extreme, but it is far from unique, according to an investigation published in the magazine Consumer Reports last month.
It found that the use of eyelash extensions can cause a host of problems, including eye infections and loss of the natural lashes.
The glue used to attach the lashes often contains formaldehyde or Latex, which can cause allergic reactions, including swelling, blisters, pain and itching. What’s more, repeated use or bad applications of the extensions can cause natural lashes to fall out – and even stop growing altogether.
Yet women cannot get enough of the treatment, which is supposed to leave them with full, long lashes, eradicating the need for mascara.
pity
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