Zowie Kinnear, 31, was left blind after eyelash extensions scratched her eyeballs.
Zowie, a legal assistant from near Bournemouth, is too petrified to ever touch any false lashes again after a pair stuck to her waterline instead of her existing eyelashes, leading to her eyeballs being scraped raw.
Zowie had been using false lashes for years when she found this lash beautician on Facebook. She first noticed warning signs that something wasn't right when she experienced intense stinging that the beautician claimed was normal. The appointment also took three hours instead of the usual 45 minutes, leading her boyfriend to start panicking that she had been kidnapped and having to knock on the door to make sure she was still there.
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Her eyes swelled shut afterwards as they tried to protect themselves from all the scratching. Zowie's boyfriend then took her to A&E the following morning where doctors struggled to open Zowie's eyes due to how swollen they were.
She said: “It felt like someone was stabbing my eyeballs.
“I was looking in the mirror and I could barely open my eyes.
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“When I opened my eyes, the only way I can describe it is as if somebody had put gel in my eyes."
Doctors managed to use specialist equipment to finally open her eyes again and used yellow dye on them to see how badly her eyeballs had been scratched.
Zowie said: “I had bright yellow dye put in and they said my eyes were scratched to pieces.
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“When I came out of the hospital I started being sick.
“I started coughing up all this yellow stuff that they’d put in my eye.
“I didn’t know what was going on - there was just yellow stuff coming out of my nose and my mouth."
“I thought I was going blind and dying.”
Doctors told Zowie to go back to the beautician to have the lash extensions removed immediately, but they refused as they claimed they were too busy to help, nor did they apologise or offer a refund.
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Zowie has regained vision, but has to wear sunglasses indoors due to light sensitivity and never wants to wear lashes ever again.
She confessed: “I feel like less of a woman.
“I used to wear lashes a lot, but I don’t wear them anymore."
Zowie is encouraging young women to choose a technician they can trust and to be informed about the dangers of false lashes.
Featured Image Credit: Triangle NewsTopics: Health, Make-Up, Real Life, Beauty