Everyone knows the old saying “beauty hurts,” but 27-year-old Ryan Briggs from Lancashire, UK, did not expect to hurt quite so much.
The natural gas installation technician has been suffering with a “balloon head” after a severe allergic reaction to hair dye he used to cover his gray hair. After applying dye to make his hair black, Briggs noticed that his head began to swell. At first, the swelling was restricted to his forehead and above, but as the reaction progressed his entire head has swollen so badly that he is unrecognizable.
Briggs said his girlfriend could not bear to look at him, and photos show that the man can barely open his eyes wider than a slit.
It all started on July 27 when Briggs applied a box of hair dye his mother had bought for him. He thought he was just going to make his gray hair blend in with the rest. While he did not follow the directions indicating that customers should do a small patch test to determine if the customer is allergic, few dye users complete this test. Briggs certainly did not expect such a severe reaction.
He said he felt a burning sensation, but assumed that was normal for hair dye, and simply went to sleep after washing out the coloring agent. But pain and itching woke him up within a few hours, and he noticed a rash and flaking skin around his hairline. Still, he didn’t think this was too out of the ordinary and went to work as usual.
But it wasn’t normal. Over the course of the work day his entire head swelled to an astonishing degree, leaving him in discomfort and anxious. After an initial visit to the hospital, Briggs had to return as the swelling not only did not slow, but picked up speed. By the time he got treatment he could not open one of his eyes.
He was forced to seek help from doctors, who have him on a course of 25 pills every day to keep the unbelievable swelling under control.
Medics think the chemical that caused the reaction was paraphenylenediamine, commonly found in hair dye.
Sore in body and in pride, Briggs admits he should have done the patch test advised by the directions, but now he’s walking around with a head that looks like the character Megamind from the 2000 movie of that name.
Briggs stayed in the hospital under observation for 13 hours as staff made sure the reaction would not cause his airway to swell shut. He was eventually sent home and is expected to fully recover.
