A man has shared his harrowing experience after an allergic reaction to hair dye left him looking like ‘Megamind’ and shocked his girlfriend to the point where she couldn’t even look at him.
Ryan Briggs, 27, from Blackburn, decided to cover up some grey hairs last month by using black hair dye applied by his mother.
What started as a routine touch-up turned into a nightmare when Ryan felt a burning sensation on his scalp. Initially, he dismissed it as normal, but things took a drastic turn the next morning.
A Frightening Transformation
When Ryan woke up and headed to work, he noticed a scaly rash forming around his hairline.
Throughout the day, his forehead began to swell alarmingly, eventually leaving him with what he described as a ‘balloon head.’
The swelling was so severe that Ryan was sent home from work. His girlfriend was left speechless and struggled to look at him because his appearance had changed so dramatically.
Rushed to the Hospital
By the next morning, the situation had worsened—Ryan could only see out of one eye.
“It was unbearably itchy. I didn’t even recognize myself. I looked like Megamind—it was that bad,” Ryan recounted.
His condition was so severe that he was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with an allergic reaction to paraphenylenediamine (PPD), a common chemical in hair dyes.
Ryan was prescribed 25 tablets a day to reduce the swelling and spent around 13 hours in the hospital before being discharged in the early hours of the morning.
Unfortunately, the hospital didn’t have the necessary medication in stock, so Ryan’s girlfriend had to pick it up the next day, as he still couldn’t see.
A Cautionary Tale
Although Ryan is now on the road to recovery, his ordeal isn’t over. He still has scabs across his scalp and warns others not to skip the crucial step of performing a patch test before using hair dye.
“It’s fully gone now, but my scalp is covered in yellow and green scabs. My face is back to normal, but I can’t stress enough—always do a patch test. It could have been much worse; the swelling was even spreading to my neck, which could have affected my airways,” Ryan cautioned.
In the end, Ryan is relieved that the worst is behind him, but he urges others to learn from his experience and always take the necessary precautions when using hair dye. “One million percent, do a patch test,” he emphasized.