Published in the Spring 2005 issue of Allergy Today. For more articles like this, subscribe to Allergy Today, click here.

When Katie Small went to have her hair dyed, the last thing she expected was to have such a severe allergic reaction that landed her with a head twice its normal size and a day in hospital.

Bad hair day

I never realised the dangers that having your hair dyed could hold.

It began on an unsuspecting Thursday night at the hairdressers, having my hair dyed. Friday night was spent at Wellington Accident and Emergency with a burnt, blistered, and weeping scalp. On Sunday I was in hospital, and a largely unrecognisable incarnation of my former self.

I have had my hair dyed only once before, also done by a professional hairdresser in a salon. It was dyed immediately after chopping off long dreadlocks, and I had a similar reaction to my initial reaction in this case, a lumpy, itchy, sore scalp. When I got back in touch with the hairdresser on that occasion, he told me that there was no way I could be having a reaction to the very standard hair dye they use commonly, and that my hair was simply “resettling” after losing the dreadlocks. The symptoms went away after a few days and I didn’t even think about it again. Until this time around.

I spent Friday tense, twitching, on edge. My head had grown in itchiness and soreness since a few hours after having my hair dyed the previous night (at which point I felt no discomfort). My scalp started being mildly irritated a few hours after I left the hairdresser, and gradually worsened over the next 24 hours to the point where I couldn’t bear it.
I tried my best not to scratch – it just seemed to exacerbate the pain – but I couldn’t help touching it occasionally and discovered that my head was covered in small lumps under my hair. Teeth gritted, I became obsessed with trying not to think about the state of my head. I felt like I was going insane.

On Friday evening, I noticed a thin yellow fluid trickling down the back of my neck, weeping out of my scalp, seeping into the roots of my hair, sliming out the bottom. It stank. I spent 10 minutes under a lukewarm shower rinsing, and rinsing, and rinsing. By the end of it, I was in tears from the soreness and itching. Towel still wrapped around my head, I shot down to the Accident and Emergency Clinic.

The doctor explained what I couldn’t see: the dye had burnt my scalp, which had blistered and was now weeping. It was a bad allergic reaction to the products that the hairdresser had used. I was sent home with a steroid cream to put on my scalp and some Voltaren. It wasn’t the greatest feeling knowing that my scalp was burnt and blistering, but I felt better having seen a doctor. Things were looking up, or so I thought.

Waking up on Saturday morning the small amount of swelling that I’d had at the back of my neck had spread. My face had expanded as the sides of my head swelled out. My glasses stretched outwards when I put them on. My scalp was just as itchy, still weeping severely, and now I had the added discomfort of a whole lot of pressure in my head. As the morning wore on my head kept inflating. Apparently I looked “like a sea-creature”. Well, at least that sounded better than “Chernobyl kid”, which had been my first impression when I saw the foreign face in the mirror.

So back to Accident and Emergency it was. My expanding face was greeted with some concern by a nurse who had seen me the night before. I was quickly taken through to an examining room, lain down on a bed, and subjected to much prodding, testing and recounting of the drama so far. Then I was hurriedly injected with medication, and given pills orally. It certainly made the next hour or so one of the more surreal I have experienced.

Once the doctors were certain I wouldn’t react violently to the large dosages they’d pumped into me they sent me on my way; this was just an after-hours clinic and they didn’t want me lying around taking up space. I swayed drunkenly out, clutching a prescription for a large amount of steroids and the promise that the swelling would go down in about six hours. I’d been given a heavy dose of anti-histamine and steroids “to arrest the swelling”, the doctor told me. “We really don’t want it to spread any further.” With my swollen head, slurred words and heavy-limbed stagger, I caught the attention of the people in the waiting room on my way out, their faces a mix of fear, horror and curiosity.

At home I fell into a deep sleep. When consciousness took hold again that evening I realised the swelling had not reduced, had not even been “arrested”. Rather, it was creeping around the sides of my face, across my forehead, into my cheeks, my eyelids, around my neck. The mirror told me I had been upgraded from “sea creature” to “freak from Far Side cartoon”.

As much as I was frustrated with the pressure and swelling on my head, and the sore, wet, itchy scalp, I was reluctant to return to a clinic that so far hadn’t been able to help me. Instead of visiting, I rang them. The receptionist put me through to the nurse, who passed me over to the doctor. The final verdict was that I would need to take an extra one of those little pink pills I’d been given. Frustrated, upset, pained and angry, I passed the night in a tense, slightly manic state, snatching handfuls of sleep between bouts of tears and paranoia. (I later learnt that this “manic” feeling was a side effect of the medication).

On Sunday morning the swelling was – unbelievably – even worse. The tissue around my eyes was so swollen that I was having trouble keeping my left one open. Aside from a small area in front of my windpipe, my neck was completely swollen. I couldn’t move my mouth properly because of the swelling in my cheeks. Facial expressions were out of the question, as were general neck movements.

I plodded back to Accident and Emergency, scared by the fact that not only did I not know what was going on with me, but the doctors so far hadn’t been able to do anything about it. They were clearly disturbed by my condition, and again I was immediately taken out the back, skipping the hour-long wait everyone else had to endure. Lying down on the bed I’d been in the day before, I had a repeat of the prodding and questioning, but this time I wasn’t stuffed with drugs. “We’ve given you about the maximum treatment we are able to give you here,” I remember a doctor telling me. They couldn’t help me any more, so they contacted the hospital and sent me there.

I waited at the hospital for a couple of hours; despite having an obese head on a regular sized body, I was still breathing and therefore could wait, apparently. It was uncomfortable, to say the least. I couldn’t even rest my head in my hands, because it would involve putting more pressure on all that swollen flesh. My glasses barely fitted my face, the arms digging sharply into my swollen temples. But worse was that my right eye had swollen to the point where I couldn’t hold it open, and my left, which had been half closed a few hours ago, was heading for a similar state. The terrifying feeling of not knowing what my body was doing was made even more frightening by barely being able to see what was going on around me. I wanted to cry and maybe a few tears leaked out, but to be honest, I was scared of what would happen if I needed to blow my nose. My ears were sore as it was from the pressure of the swelling.

Finally I was seen. I was so tired of explaining what had happened, but managed to get it out one last time. More questioning, prodding, listening to my chest, blood pressure and temperature readings. And then I was injected with medication into various pieces of flesh, and left alone. I spent the rest of the day lying there, scared but hopeful. In the evening one of the more senior doctors who had seen me (who, disturbingly enough, didn’t look to be much older than I was) came back to check me out. It was an effort, but I could open my eyes. An improvement, finally; I could have danced. They pulled the needles out of my arm and I was free to go, still heinously swollen, out into the cold Wellington night.

The swelling has gradually abated since. It took almost a week for the swelling to go down entirely and two weeks until I finished the medication. Now, almost three weeks later my scalp is still irritated.

As the hairdresser who first dyed my hair years ago should have said, and the hairdresser who did the deed this time around wouldn’t stop repeating, I can never dye my hair again.