Desperate Mother Pays The Price After Latest Beauty Trend Goes Horribly Wrong

A woman spoke out after she tried to dye her hair to follow the unicorn locks trend, but ended up with severe chemical burns on her scalp. (Warning: The photos below are graphic).

Kirsty Weston used heavy-duty powder bleach bought from a street vendor to lighten her hair in an attempt to dye it into pastel shades that resemble a unicorn’s mane.

“It was before it became really popular and I just wanted something a bit different,” she told the Daily Mail. “I never thought it would end up completely destroying my hair and changing my life like this. It’s caused a lot of pain and I’ve completely lost my self-confidence.”

Weston said she started experiencing severe pain immediately after putting the bleach in her hair.

“Within 15 minutes, my hair was literally smoking. The pain was so excruciating that I started to feel dizzy, like I was going to faint. It happened quite suddenly. I could feel that it was quite warm, but it got so much worse very quickly. I immediately went to wash it all off, but I think it had already got into my scalp,” she said.

“The next day, half my face started to balloon and I thought it was a reaction. The next morning, I went to A&E at Watford general as at that stage, I couldn’t open my left eye. It was getting really painful.”

The woman from Hertfordshire, England, was prescribed antibiotics and was told she had experienced an allergic reaction. Over the next several weeks, the pain continued. She ultimately learned that she had suffered from severe chemical burns.

“A plastic surgeon came to see me and when they lifted my hair, most of my scalp came away with it,” she said. “I was a complete emotional wreck. They told me that I needed to have surgery the next day. They put a bandage around my head and I wasn’t able to put pressure on it, so I had to sleep sitting up.”

Weston ended up having six surgeries, including a skin graft, in which doctors removed skin from her thigh to replace the skin that she lost on her head. She was offered two treatment options as far as hair regrowth, but because there are no hair follicles in the skin from her thigh, there is a chance either treatment could fail.

“My options are to have a skin expansion treatment. They place balloons under the skin. These are filled with saline every week, until that skin stretches enough and then the healthy skin is pulled down onto the damaged skin, to reduce the baldness,” she said.

“I’m not sure if I’m ready for that at the minute. It would require more surgery and I would have to travel back and forth to hospital every week, which is difficult when I have a little girl to look after. I have also been offered a hair transplant, but they aren’t great for women. It will cover the scalp, but I’m never going to have long flowing locks. I’m not sure what I am going to do so, at the minute, I’m just concentrating on getting my skin graft healed.”

The 29-year-old mother said she decided to speak out to warn others about dyeing their own hair.

“I would tell other people to just go to a professional who knows what they are doing. I was trying to save some money but bleach is dangerous stuff,” she said. “I didn’t do a patch test and I know I should have, but this was a burn rather than an allergic reaction. The skin was sensitive, the bleach was very strong and it got too warm and burned my scalp. I worry about this being sold to people who don’t know what they are doing. The box I had was tested and it met all safety standards, but I think this strength of bleach should be restricted to professional use only.”

Many readers questioned the woman’s decision to purchase and use the hair dye the way she did.

“Why, in the world would you buy some type of hair kit off a street vendor?” one Mad World News reader commented on the site’s Facebook page. “There are several types of beauty supply houses; which would have been a lot safer, than a vendor off the street!”

“Sorry this happened to you!” another added. “But what the hell did you want unicorn hair for? At the age of 29, I would think you would’ve grown up enough to know how stupid that idea was!! Also your mother does hair. Why didn’t you wait for her? Or did you realize she would have told you were stupid! Like some others said ‘you will pay the price for this choice you made’ all the rest of your life.”

Sources: Daily Mail, Mad World News/Facebook / Featured Image: Pixabay / Embedded Images: PA Real Life via Daily Mail