The phrase 'no pain no gain' often gets thrown around by diehard beauty buffs, but dealing with the consequences of a treatment that goes wrong can leave people feeling seriously regretful. One woman has revealed a horrific allergic reaction to eyelash extensions that left her housebound due to a fear of scaring children with her terrifying 'zombie' eyes.
Haley Fetzer, a teen from Ohio, US, could have never imagined how painful a simple lash treatment could become when she excitedly booked her appointment. A fortnight after a successful lash extension treatment, Fetzer booked in to get an infill - essentially a top-up to her fluffy lashes. In the hours that followed, the young woman's eyes became troublingly bloodshot and started secreting a 'goop' every time she blinked.
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The 17-year-old's worst fears were realised when she woke up the next morning to find her eyes completely sealed shut - but that was just the beginning of her brutal beauty blunder.
Her symptoms worsened in the days t hat followed, as small 'broken blood vessels' started to spread throughout the bottom of her eyes, leaving the young woman scared that she'd go blind if they reached her pupils.
Fetzer quickly asked her lash technician to remove the lashes the next day, a process which only exacerbated her discomfort as she compared the painful removal to 'getting bitten by a million ants'.
Desperate to alleviate the symptoms, the smoothie shop worker went to her GP who prescribed her a five-week course of eye drops, but Fetzer was left with bloodshot eyes while waiting for the medication to help her heal - forcing her to become housebound due to shame over her appearance.
Recounting the scary ordeal, the teen said: "When it first started it looked like little broken blood vessels all pooled in the bottom of my eye.
"My first reaction was 'oh my gosh they're getting worse, it's going to go to my pupil and I'm going to go blind'.
"Even when I had my glasses on, I didn't want to go out in public."
"It was embarrassing, I had to call off work. At the time I worked in a smoothie shop and I was like 'no one's going to want a smoothie from me'. I looked scary."
Vowing to never get the 'disaster' treatment again after experiencing such a severe reaction, the waitress revealed: "I felt that I looked like a scary zombie and if I went out I'd scare little kids."
Fetzer originally got her lashes done a few days before her prom, and despite having a mild reaction where her eyes became 'very pink', she put it down to hay fever as she lives in the countryside.
After buying eye drops to tackle the redness and believing her reaction was due to pollen, the teen then decided to have her lashes infilled again two weeks later with horrifying results.
The American said that "within two hours my eyes were bloodshot red" before adding that her eyes "felt very heavy" at the time.
"It looked like there was blood pooling in my eyes and every time I blinked goop was coming out of them," she explained.
"As the night went on, my eyes were so watery that the lashes were already coming off".
Fetzer panicked and consulted her lash technician, who assured her that they should heal and recommended she wait to see what her eyes looked like the following day.
But things only got worse from there, as the waitress explained: "The next morning I woke up and couldn't even physically open my eyes, not even with my fingers, nothing.
"It felt like a terrible case of pink eye."
The teen tried to treat the terrible reaction herself, to no avail. "Usually whenever you have pink eye, you can put a cold wash cloth on them. I tried that and it didn't work, I tried a warm one and it also didn't work," she said.
"I had to blindly walk myself into the bathroom and put my eyes under running warm water and eventually I could peel them open.
"But there was so much goop. It was like a very thick mucus. When it's on every single lash, it's almost impossible to get it off."
If the sticky mucus wasn't traumatic enough, Fetzer's conditions started to worsen when her eyes became so swollen that they were sealed shut for four days.
The waitress added: "I could open my eyes a little bit once the dried mucus was off but my vision was so blurry I could hardly see.
"I started getting very severe headaches and felt a shocking sensation in one of my eyes, it felt like a little zap at the bottom of it."
Although her symptoms started to improve after three to four days on medication, the teen reveals that she was housebound for five weeks owing to the severe reaction distorting her appearance.
The dramatic redness took weeks to clear up and Fetzer " feared going out in public until the whole reaction was done".
Opening up about the ordeal, she added: " I go the gym, hang out with friends and I'm hardly ever home and it was really different for me to have to stay home all because of something that happened to my eyes.
"Another hard transition for me was, you go from having these pretty lashes to when you get them taken off, you can't wear any mascara.
"So I felt almost naked, the only make-up I'd usually wear was mascara. If I didn't have anything on my lashes at all, I didn't feel pretty, [just] bare and naked.
"It was a terrible feeling and I knew I couldn't do anything about it and had to wait it out, and that's what was so hard."
The young waitress is now urging others to be aware of severe reactions to eyelash glue, warning them to do their research around the types of glues available before getting their lashes done.
Fetzer admits that she was "never aware in a million years that that would happen" so wanted to spread awareness for other beauty lovers.
"I've seen allergic reactions where people's eyes are pink for a few days, but it was to the point where my eyes were swollen shut," she said.
"Just be aware that this can happen and if you have sensitive skin, it's probably not the best idea".
Unsurprisingly, the teen will be staying away from any form of false lash from now on, but the whole ordeal has forced her to feel more comfortable in her own skin.
She said: "Now after having that entire reaction I will never wear false lashes or get extensions.
"But I really think that each to their own - everyone's beautiful in their own ways and you don't need lashes to feel confident."
Do you have a similar beauty experience to share? Email us at ellie.fry@reachplc.com
