A 27-year-old woman had to be hospitalised and put on a drip after she had a severe reaction to hair dye she bought at a local shop.
According to Mirror, Leonie Dee from Aberaeron, Wales suffered blisters on her scalp and her eyes were swollen shut after attempting to dye her hair in two different colours.
She had used Schwarzkopf Live in ‘Cosmic Blue’ and ‘Ultra Violet’, which cost her about £9.58 in total (RM55).
Leonie said she had done a patch test for each colour as advised, but didn’t have a reaction to them.
“Nothing came up at all – not a mark. So I went ahead and dyed the bottom half of my hair purple, and that went fine,” she said.
“Then I gave it a couple of days before doing the blue hair dye on the top half of my head at about 5.30pm on Thursday.”
“When I woke up the next morning, my ears and the side of my neck had started swelling a bit – but I was able to manage it okay with just taking some anti-allergy tablets I had at home.”
However, when Leonie woke up the next day, the reaction had worsened.
“I woke up and my hairline was covered in these big blisters, and my eyes were swollen so much I couldn’t see anything.”
Leonie was rushed to the hospital that evening and spent over 36 hours there, with steroids, anti-allergy tablets and creams, and a fluid drip being administered to her.
“The blisters kept popping and oozing out blue dye,” she said.
“They had to keep the lights off above my hospital bed because the light was irritating my eyes. All I could do was sit and wait for it to get better.”
Leonie did some research into Schwarzkopf hair dye and found that the darker colours, like the Cosmic Blue she had used, have a higher concentration of active ingredients, which is what she thinks she reacted to.
Thankfully, Leonie was able to return home on Monday morning, even though the swelling had not completely gone down.
“It was really scary – at one point they were worried that the swelling might move to the front of my throat,” she said.
“I even asked them at the hospital whether shaving all my hair off would help. I was ready to do that if it would have made a difference. But the dye had already absorbed into my scalp, so there was nothing to do but wait for the swelling and the blisters to go down.”
“I’m definitely never dyeing my hair again – I’m going to let it grow out and then just leave it.”
Also read: 29yo Woman Almost Died From Horrible Allergic Reaction to Hair Dye Even After a Patch Test
