This transformation was so startling that his girlfriend found it difficult to look at him.
His mom applied some black hair dye she had purchased to help cover the grays.
However, the next morning, as he was getting ready for work, he noticed a scaly rash around his hairline.
Throughout the day, his forehead started to swell significantly, turning him into what he described as having a ‘balloon head.’
“It was really badly itchy. I didn’t look like myself at all. It was horrible. It was massive. I looked like Megamind, it was bad,” he explained.
Following the swelling, his workplace sent him home, and he visited the hospital.
“I went home and my girlfriend was gobsmacked, she couldn’t look at me because I didn’t look like me, I had this big balloon head,” he added.
The following day, Ryan woke up to find his vision reduced to one eye.
The doctors informed him that he had reacted to paraphenylenediamine (PPD), a common chemical found in many hair dyes.
“I thought I’d wake up and it’d be gone, but I woke up and it was totally different. When I looked in the mirror that morning I didn’t know what to think,” Ryan said.
“They said it was an allergic reaction to PPD, which is in the chemicals of the hair dye.
“I was in the hospital for about 13 hours, I got discharged at about 3 o’clock in the morning.
“My girlfriend had to go get the tablets for me from the pharmacy as I still couldn’t see.”
Though he’s feeling better now, Ryan is dealing with scabs across his scalp and is eager to warn others not to repeat his mistake.
“It’s fully gone now. My scalp is full of yellow and green scabs but my face has gone normal now,” he said.
“That’s why they kept me in because if it had gone down to my neck it could have started to close my airways up.
“I’m glad it’s over now but definitely do patch test, one million percent.”
