Last year I accepted an invitation to review a beauty product that I was not familiar with. Specifically, the product was one of those “expensive” wrinkle reducing serum/cream thingies that I’m always a sucker for and could not, until NOW, say no to because I’m terrified of getting wrinkles. Anyway, to make a very long and quite painful/embarrassing story short, here’s how my unofficial review went:

1.) Put anti-wrinkle cream on

2. ) Wake up the next morning with very puffy and itchy eyes.

3.) Go about my regular business with sunglasses on all day because my eyes were all kinds of scary looking. Good thing I had some cute sunglasses!

4.) By noon, my entire face and neck started getting itchy and hot. I looked in the mirror and I had huge red spots all over me.

5.) Took some Claritin and hoped things would get better real quick because I was responsible for hosting a baby shower the next morning.

6.) Wake up to the most horrific face I’ve ever seen. One eye was swollen shut and I kind of looked liked the elephant man. (I am NOT kidding you!) So, a trip to the emergency room was definitely in order.

7.) ER doctor said I had an allergic reaction to one of the ingredients in the anti-wrinkle cream. Ya think? He gave me a shot in the butt and some other medicine and sent me home.

So, in conclusion, testing out a new beauty product caused me to have a severe allergic reaction and cost me nearly $500 in medical bills. In the end I declined to review this product, and never even contacted the company back that sent me the product for review. I should have said something before now but I didn’t.

From that moment on I vowed to never again use a facial beauty product I was not familiar with. However, a few weeks ago I was asked to test out another anti-wrinkle cream from a different PR company. What is up with all these wrinkle cream solicitations anyway? Do PR Peeps think Moms are old hags? Hopefully they just think that we think we are old hags. LOL.

Anyway, I was familiar with the brand but had never used their products so I nervously replied with an, “Ok I’ll try your stuff”. Boy, was I a freakin’ idiot or what? Within a few days, my face started getting red. Thankfully the reaction was very mild and it went away rather quickly. So, it seems as though I really am allergic to a mystery ingredient in several retinol-based wrinkle serums. Has this ever happened to you? Have you ever had a review gone bad? What did you do? What is the appropriate thing to do?

These days I’m only using L”Oreal or Wal-mart’s Equate version of L’Oreal. I feel like I can trust a product that has yet to turn me into Elephant man.