Warning - this article contains graphic content
A woman says she had a near death experience after having her eyebrows waxed and tinted.
Michelle Clarke, 31, from Coventry, says her eyebrows completely 'fell off' after her appointment, explaining she later went into anaphylactic shock and was rushed to A&E due to a reaction to the tint.
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Michelle believes having her brows waxed before the tint was applied allowed the dye to quickly enter her body, which led to her face becoming so swollen it 'doubled' in size.
"I haven't had an eyebrow wax and tint since and I would never have it done again," says Michelle.
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"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.
"I looked like a monster. 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.
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"I was housebound for a good week. It was absolutely awful."
After six weeks in recovery and with eyebrows having now grown back, Michelle has spoken out about her ordeal, in a bid to raise awareness of waiting at least 48 hours for the results of a patch test and ensuring that beauticians know the correct order of treatments.
While Michelle did have a patch test, she waited around 45 minutes to an hour while a friend had a beauty treatment. Michelle says she was advised that they'd do the procedure as she hadn't had a reaction.
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"The night I had them done they started to feel a bit itchy and I just thought 'oh, it just might be something from the dye or whatever'," Michelle continues.
"I didn't think anything of it. But when I woke up on the Friday morning my face was a lot more swollen and my eyebrows were weeping.
"I was out with my friend and my airways started closing up so I was taken to hospital and they had to give me an injection to open my airways back up and they said that I was going into anaphylactic shock.
"It felt like someone had me in a really tight bear hug and was just squeezing and it was getting tighter and tighter.
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"That was the only time in my life that I genuinely feared [I was going to die], like wow, that was my closest death experience."
After being treated at A&E Michelle's breathing returned to normal and she was sent home with steroid cream.
But unfortunately her reaction only worsened.
"It felt like my eyebrows were on fire and my forehead was burning from the inside out," Michelle continues.
"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 but they were still weeping with puss at that point as well. It was itchy and painful because of the swelling. At one point I actually got black eyes from the swelling.
"My face probably swelled double [its normal size]. At one point my eyes were completely shut, I could still see a little bit but the swelling made it look like my eyes were completely shut."
After returning to hospital once again due to a deterioration in her breathing, Michelle received antibiotics, steroids and antihistamines to help alleviate her reaction.
"It was probably about two weeks it was pussing, bleeding and then falling off. It was quite a long process," she says.
"The hairs were trying to grow through but every time the scabs would fall off, the hairs would come off with it. So for about three to four weeks I had no eyebrows.
"As a girl, your eyebrows and that sort of thing, define you as a character.
"My eyebrows were fair anyway and the reason I got them done was to prevent me from drawing them on every day and I could just get up and go, whereas it's had the completely opposite effect.
"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.
"My friend came shopping with me looking like that so I didn't feel like an idiot. If I saw someone in a supermarket like that, I'd double take and have a look, and that's what people were doing to me."
Michelle's eyebrows completely returned to normal after around after eight to ten weeks and she's now keen to raise awareness of her experience.
"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," she says.
"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."
Lucy Devine