Miracle of My Ass

I meant to post this two weeks ago, but in between then and now a nasty stomach bug ravaged my family. I believe we are still in recovery. Unluckily (or luckily, depending on opinion) for my family, we never all get sick at once. It's been a solid week of sickness because there are four of us.

Back to the matter at hand.

I have a little bit of redness on my nose and cheeks usually. And no, it's not a lupus rash because a) it's in the folds of my nose, b) it's got teeny veins in it, weird to say, and c) I've been tested for lupus.

Anyway, I ordered this rosacea cream off of Amazon.com:

I am sure that for many, many people this cream has worked wonders. In fact, I ordered it because most of the reviews were very positive. Another plus in its favor were the ingredients--I recognized all but two or three. It was mostly made of good things.

When it came, I eagerly slathered it on my skin every day.

After three days, my skin started peeling.

After six days, I woke up to a face covered in a kind of rash, uniform redness and raised bumps. It kind of looked like a chemical peel.

This picture was taken about three days after I stopped using the cream. It really doesn't do it justice because it was super red and bumpy. This photo makes my nose look big too. Probably I should have taken another one. ;) Alas.

I had to go out in public a few times two weeks ago and I honestly wore hats, wore my hair down, and did my best to pretend my face looked normal. It totally didn't.

The day I woke up looking like I'd been to dermatologist for face-burning, I finally realized maybe this face cream wasn't for me. I'm slow like that. I ran upstairs to my bathroom to re-read the ingredients. Lo and behold, "wheat germ" is listed as an ingredient.

I don't know if that, out of all those other ingredients, is what burned my face up and caused such a pointed allergic reaction, but I'm not taking any chances. I had never thought to check for wheat in lotions and make-up, but boy howdy I will now. :)

Damn wheat.