Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
The bitterness of poor quality remains longs after the sweetness of low price is forgotten. Benjamin Franklin
A strange thing has happened two times in a row. The upper eyelid of my right eye became red and swollen and this time the left upper eyelid has become red and swollen. I think I’ve figured out what I’ve done two months in a row that has triggered this. I’m pretty sure it is an allergic reaction. I’m even pretty sure I know what has caused it. It is my frugality, I bought a product on sale instead of the product I usually buy, two months in a row.
No matter how cheap that product is, I will not be buying it. I didn’t realize what the difference was between the two products, and I assumed there wasn’t much of a difference. Now I do not know for sure that what I am blaming is the culprit. I could use it a third time and be more sure, but that seems like a really stupid idea so I will believe what I believe and not use that product again.
The only reason I put two and two together is I keep a food journal and had written about my swollen eye, and when it happened again I did some detective work to come up with my working theory. If I didn’t have the food journal and note symptoms that show up in my life I wouldn’t be connecting the dots. By keeping track of symptoms that show up I try to figure out what might have caused them.
Allergic reactions are no joke. Some people are lucky and their reactions are mild and not life-threatening. Some people are not lucky enough to have time to figure things out. If we get a warning like an allergic reaction we should heed it, and figure out how to manage without what caused the problem.
The offending ingredient I think is PPD which is an ingredient in hair color. The darker the hair color, the permanency of that hair color, and those that last for up to six weeks are the ones most likely to cause problems according to the research I am doing. We need to watch out for “Fade defying color,” if we have sensitivities. Lighter colors tend to cause fewer problems from what I am reading so I might be moving out of the “Browns” and into the “Blondes” for my hair color.
Don’t bargain shop for parachutes or plastic surgery. Unknown
The other option, the one that makes me shudder is to not color my hair at all. I will, I tell myself go natural at some point, but this is not that point. It can’t be that point. But, the truth is I would look better with a full head of grey hair than a swollen red eye and it doesn’t feel very comfortable either.
Hopefully, my choices are not grey or no allergy reactions. What I was doing was coloring my hair a nice brown and then putting in hi-lights to give blondish streaks.
I’ve colored my own hair for years. It wasn’t until my daughter was getting married, and urged me to get hi-lights that I had my color professionally done. When Covid hit I started doing my own root touch-up, my daughter stepped in and did foil hi-lights. We seemed like a dynamite team. Now, this allergic reaction showed up I’ll never look at hair color the same. Until we suffer our own allergic reaction to something we don’t understand what it is like. If I could just pay full price for the other hair color and have this go away but then I wouldn’t know an allergic reaction awaited me, and if I didn’t use the same product two consecutive months I wouldn’t have connected the dots.
In the end, I need to be grateful for hard-won knowledge about an allergy, the price of a bargain, and questioning what the difference is between products before assuming they are basically the same.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get. Warren Buffet
A bargain is something you don’t need, at a price you can’t resist. Franklin Jones
Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing. Albert Einstein
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The Price of a Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization Kindle Edition
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Secrets and Silence: What if your biggest secret became public? Paperback – Large Print, Aug. 29 2020
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