Anyone who knows me knows that I love Halloween......and that I also have extremely sensitive skin. (Thanks, Mom!) For the most part, those two don't mix well together, especially when it comes to my love for the holiday and my desire to go all out when it comes to my costumes every year. So, it made me really sad a few weeks ago when my eyes started to get a little red whenever I used a certain eye makeup remover. So I switched to using Coconut Oil as an eye makeup remover because I had heard so many great things about it! You can eat it, slather it all over your body and whiten your teeth with it...You can pretty much swim in it and it will transform your life. After the first few days of using it to take off my eye makeup, my skin was looking fantastic!
And then I woke up one morning and my eyelids were bright red. Although it hurt to put on makeup, I had to so I wouldn't scare off my co-workers. Then the redness spread to under my eyes and it started to get dry and itchy. I immediately made an appointment with my dermatologist knowing that Halloween was around the corner and my Miss Argentina (from Beetlejuice) costume required a full sea foam green/blue face and body paint and heavy dark makeup around my eyes. What was I going to do? I then started to do some research on the Internet thinking that it had to be the coconut oil. I read an interesting article that said if you are of European descent, DO NOT USE COCONUT OIL ON YOUR FACE. There it was, practically shouting at me! I was of European descent and I was using coconut oil on my face. BINGO and CRAP! So I stopped using it and canceled my dermatologist appointment, apparently thinking that I was now a doctor who could solve this herself by slopping on a mask of cucumber, yogurt, honey and oatmeal every night and it would go away. Although, it was getting a little better around my eyes, the redness was not completely gone. Mind you, I was getting a lot of compliments of how great my skin looked!
But then Halloween night came around and there was no backing down- I was painting my face no matter what! I had two parties to go to that weekend and both involved face paint. It was a chance I was willing to take! After the weekend was over and Sunday night came around, I scrubbed the crap out of my face, moisturized like crazy and put a few tea bags on my eyes before bed. But when I woke up on Monday morning, I was horrified! I looked like Quasimodo from the Hunchback of Notre-Dame wearing the red Ninja Turtle's eye mask.
There was no way I was going to work looking like this! I put on a pair of sunglasses and drove to my dermatologist's office....Although I didn't have an appointment, the receptionist told me that the Doctor would be able to see me right away. Actually, I took off my sunglasses to show her my face and she gasped and said, "Oh honey, put those glasses back on!" When my dermatologist came in to see me, I told her what I had done to myself and she just kept saying, "poor thing!" I wanted to whip out the pictures of my Halloween costume and show her that it was well worth it but I thought it would be a tad inappropriate. She gave me some cream and pills and that was that. The next day when I woke up, the swelling was completely gone and the redness had certainly subdued a bit but it was still obvious that my eyes were not normal. I wished I could have worn my sunglasses to work but I sucked it up and for the first time ever I didn't wear a stitch of eye makeup that day. I am now almost completely healed and I have to say the best part about those pills are that they make your skin so dry that it feels as though I had a face lift. I may be on to something here....
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