A woman left blind after eyelash extensions scratched her eyeballs says she feels like ‘less of a woman’ after the ordeal.
Legal assistant Zowie Kinnear, from Bournemouth, says fake lashes were stuck to her waterline when they should have been bonded to her existing lashes.
Her eyes swelled shut after the treatment as they tried to protect themselves from being scratched raw.
Her boyfriend rushed her to the nearest A&E the morning after the treatment were medics struggled to prize her eyelids open for an examination.
Ms Kinnear said she felt as though someone was stabbing her eyeballs. She added: “I was looking in the mirror and I could barely open my eyes.
"When I opened my eyes, the only way I can describe it is as if somebody had put gel in my eyes.
"I'm normally quite good with pain but I was in tears because it was so painful."
A&E doctors prized open Ms Kinnear’s eyes using specialist equipment and pumped yellow dye into them to see how badly she was scratched.
It showed her eyeballs were covered in thin scratches and as if that wasn’t enough, the dye itself made her ill as she begun being sick shortly after it was administered.
She added: "When I came out of the hospital I started being sick.
"I started coughing up all this yellow stuff that they'd put in my eye.
"I didn't know what was going on - there was just yellow stuff coming out of my nose and my mouth.
"It was horrific. I thought I was going blind and dying."
Doctors advised Ms Kinnear to return to the beautician, found on Facebook, immediately to get the eyelash extensions removed. However, the beauty therapist dismissed her request and said she was too busy to help, she allegedly didn’t apologise or offer any support.
Ms Kinnear - who has regained vision, but has to wear sunglasses due to sensitivity - said: "I feel like less of a woman.
"I used to wear lashes a lot, but I don't wear them anymore.
"I'm just too scared."
Now she wants to warn young girls about the dangers of lashes and picking a technician you can trust.
For her, the warning signs were the appointment taking three hours, as opposed to the usual 45 minutes, and being in intense pain during the treatment.
Despite the technician assuring her intense stinging was normal, Ms Kinnear now knows having lash extensions put on shouldn't hurt that much.
The appointment took so long that her boyfriend started to panic that she had been kidnapped and knocked on the door.
She has since bought strip lashes to reignite her sense of womanhood, but can't bring herself to put them on.
She doesn't think she will ever wear any type of false eyelashes again.
