Horror Stories

YUCKY OLD OATMEAL BATH SOAK

I am loving the rash stories, keep them coming!  Here is one from my college years:   I was staying as a house guest for a week or so with my college boyfriend’s family.  They were lovely people, and kept a wonderful house, which included a big bathtub.  When my bath time came,  I noticed a box of Oatmeal bath soak.  It looked like it had been around a while, already opened, so I didn’t think my hostess would mind if I put a little of it into my bath, which I was already in.  I put the oat bath stuff in….and….so gross…mealy worms!!!!  Yucky, yucky memory.  It was like a bad dream.  I got out of that bath so fast, and rinsed off in the shower after all the mealy worms were down the drain.  It is the worst feeling, it took me days not to feel that crawly sensation.  Ewwwww.

ATTACK OF THE ANCIENT EYE CREAM MICROBES

FMasters says:

My saga began on a hot August day about three years ago as I peered, with one eye open, into the morning mirror. I was reflected back to me with that perfect sunlight that calls attention to the wrinkles, dark circles and puffiness surrounding the delicate eye skin with unwelcome detail. Great. I have a wedding to attend and I would like to, well, look, er, fresh. Yes, fresh…like a daisy. (Is that a douche tagline? Oops.)

Hmm, I think…somewhere in my cupboard, in a squashed up gift bag, behind some homemade bath salts that I’ll never use (because I did it wrong, damn you Martha Stewart) rests a free anti-aging eye cream sample. So what? – I think – so what if it is from the last century, it’s never been opened. Plus, LOOK at my wrinkles, I need help STAT.

With a liberal ease that only bleeding hearts normally enjoy I slather this origins-unknown-eye-aid all over my eye region. WOW, it burns. Holy sh*t, it *really* burns. And it is tingling like my eyes are stuck in powerful electrical sockets. Yay!! – this miracle solution is really working hard to make me fresh as the driven snow. (Detergent tagline? Bah.) Those little nanotechnilogical paraben soaked brushes are scrubbing away the old and exposing the new!

To enhance the process I take a scolding shower and let the cream STEAM in. I’m going to have the skin of a blushing 10 year-old when I get out, I think.

If I’m to be honest here, and so far I have been, I did have this nagging thought in the back of my mind that something was amiss with that anthropological artifact. Yet, stalwart in my mission, I did not remove the cream.

I get my outfit on in my mirror-less room. In the middle of pulling off-white fishnets over my pasty legs my eyes began to tear spontaneously and forcibly; without any emotional provocation. I had Sly and the Family Stone playing. This is not music to cry to. The tears were flooding to the point where it was difficult for me to make it down the hallway to the bathroom.

My new mid-morning reflection was breathtaking. Not in a good way. The area surrounding my eyes could best be described as fresh as swollen and rotten plum flesh. My whites were shot through with blood and I looked like I’d “just fallen down the stairs” and to be just a hair under 150 years old.

I immediately cleansed my skin about two to three hundred times. Now it was me scrubbing off the micro-scrubbers, which turned out to be some horrible bacteria eating away at my skin! Gee-ross!

My dermatologist told me that if I didn’t watch it and my products got old that the bacteria could cause to me to go blind. Now, I don’t know if that part is true or his scare tactics.

But…

It took almost two weeks for my skin to return to normal. It appeared crepey and paper thin like golden brown puff pastry flakes. It was an odd experience to be speaking with friends while they become hypnotized by the peculiar skin around your eyes.

Never again.

In order to attend the wedding I was pumped up with antibiotics, had to pile chamomile cream and steroid cream (from the derma) around my eyes and wear sunglasses.

To this day the thought of those beasties eating away at me makes my stomach lurch.

BUILT ON A CRUMBLING FOUNDATION

Alyssa says:

I had a shoot on a cold, November morning where I had to be on-set at 5:30am. Holy cow. I can get up and be somewhere at that time of day, but to show up “camera-ready” as they requested? This was going to be tough…

I got up at 4:15, showered, washed, dried, and styled my hair and then began with the make-up routine. I had a bottle of moisturizer and my small container of liquid foundation and was going to mix a little, just like a make-up artist had showed me how to do. Each of them were no more than a few years old (I could still remember purchasing them) and I kept them in a cool, dark drawer of my dressing table. I rarely wore the liquid foundation… it was in my collection for on-camera auditions and gigs. As I smoothed the concoction on my face, it got tight and began to feel hot and itchy. At 4:45 in the morning, I did NOT have time for this. My face became increasingly, visibly red beneath the foundation. I washed it off and found my face to have, in mere minutes, turned from healthy and dewy into dry, scratched, and feeling BURNED! It was horrible! I showed up to the set without any face make-up on an incredibly sensitive. It was mind-over-matter the whole day to keep from clawing at my face and the make-up artist did an amazing job hiding my redness. Every time we took a break, I would press my face up against any cool surface I could find and it was almost a month before my skin returned to normal.

This was not a container of ancient or cheap cosmetics… these were professional grade, high quality products that were months past their prime, but they totally did me in and could have made for an embarrassing shoot. I kept thinking of Buddy Epson, the man who was first hired to play the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz and had a reaction to the silver make-up and had to be hospitalized… I could’ve lost a gig in my attempt to be thrifty.

I’m not one to be wasteful, but when my Beauty Alert labels tell me that time is up, I don”t mess around…