Brows & Lashes with a Few Helpful Tips

A few essentials for the CFIDS/ME/CFS and Fibro survival kit

It's now Monday and I've been through my roughest weeks continuing into the roughest weekend which I've had in quite some time.  That includes the dastardly emergency-gallbladder/gallstones-surgery-with-pneumonia-on-top-of-it-all episode.  But hallelujah, I did indeed make it to my hair stylist/colorist.  She's an amazing talent who can work miracles for those who are follicularly-impaired - thinning hair, bald in some spots and just all sorts of things happening that shouldn't happen to any woman!  But what can you do? (Get someone like my Diana!)

I'm beat, exhausted.  The color of my lips fluctuates between white and blue, I'm experiencing pain where I've never known pain could occur - now that's a comforting feeling since how many more places can there possibly be?  (Hmm...how and why DOES that keep happening?)  Enough describing?  Do halt those tears on my behalf.  I know: pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

So enough complaining: on with the show!

My the brow and lashes lady did a magnificent job.  (Again: how DO they do it?)  I finally - and again - have two distinct brows I can follow, embellish, not even do nothing at all to them if I don't feel like it.  For me, at least, my brows don't need to get color as often as lashes, but if I ever get the energy to do so, I would love to go in for lash tinting and brows alone, frequently.  The lash tinting can last to about six weeks depending on how often you wash your face, exfoliate the face, which products you use and so forth.

By the by: while tinting eye lashes is quite commonplace in areas such as Asia, there is a bit of controversy surrounding tinting of lashes here in the States.  It took me a few years to get the nerve up to make that move to getting my lashes done.  I'd first seen it done in Australia, in the tropics where women do NOT want to put makeup on but  - well, know that they need it?   And a note: do NOT try this at home.  You REALLY do need a (great) professional doing this! 

What I also love about the tinting/dyeing of brows and lashes is that once the lashes have had a few treatments the eye lashes actually thicken because of the build up of color.   I find that it really lasts for about six weeks once you've given your lashes a good "foundation" and had them done every four weeks in the beginning then taper down to every 6-8 weeks once there's a little more "body" with the lashes.  Oh I do know how ridiculous this sounds.  But we aren't all blessed with thick brows and visible lashes so "blondies" need to do so much more work.  Furthermore, we who have CFIDS/ME/CFS and fibro can thank these illnesses for the hair sparsity, which becomes a monster of a problem if you happen to be lucky enough to also develop thyroid problems. 

In the end - FOR ME - tinting and dyeing is a time and energy saver in the long run.  At the moment my brows hairs are a nice brown.  But eventually brows hairs fall off and new hairs grow back in, though in white, while in other places the color wears off.  Too soon finding the "hairs" among the peach fuzz will again become another treasure hunt every time you choose to "fix" the face.

At any rate, I am crashing like never before.  Like I said earlier, this past weekend was a killer.  I rested, rested and rested and STILL ended up in worse shape than I've ever been.  

Therefore, my hair results will have to remain for another post.  I'm just too beat to go there.  (And I'm keeping posts on the shorter side, remember?)  I think that those of you with CFIDS/ME/CFS and/or fibro know how hard it is to post, especially when you're feeling worse than your "normal" self.  However we had some interesting observations/decisions to make: shave head or not and every permutation you can imagine.

OK, today I thought I'd add the following tips to make up for the lousy writing.  I know quite a few of you may know this already, especially because our Type A personalities dig for everything we can find.  However, just in case...

• Use a hand fan when you run a fever, like I do at night.  In the above picture you see one of the beautiful Malaysian fans my daughter-in-law gave me.  (Thank you, F!)  I used them all the time when the night sweats suddenly attack me with no warning.  Places like Pier One Import used to carry these sorts of fans and I've heard that if you're lucky you may run into them at some point.  If so, grab them!  They're great!
• Eye mask: the very basic eye mask at Drugstore dot com is absolutely fabulous.  It's not too tight, I doesn't have little areas where light can still sneak in. The fabric doesn't make me break out in yet more sweat.  I find that with the face mask I REALLY lose track of what day it is upon waking up.  6AM vs 6PM?   Easy to do.  You're in your own little world.  This isn't a sleep trick that works often, but enough times that I give it a try when desperate.
• iPod: I've downloaded a lot of music that I can "handle," not a very common occurrence for many reasons.  But when it works, it works!  See link on music and hypersensitivity to sound.
• Arnica: I don't understand why arnica has never really caught on here in the States since it's a "known" commodity in Canada, Great Britain and Australia. It's used for bruising and works incredibly well.  I happened upon it in a drugstore in Oz and couldn't believe how quickly a huge bruise on my son's toe, which had been there for a couple of YEARS, disappearEd, within a couple of weeks of using it.  Also, I bump into things a lot - or fall.  Consequently, I often find a bruise here and there.  Arnica, I've found, gets rid of the bruise VERY quickly.

As always, I hope everyone is feeling their very best, only better.  Ciao and paka!


(Note: I apologize for the mess this post was in before I fixed it.  It was "published" quite by accident.  The mess that happened between my brain being completely fried and my hand accidentally hitting "publish" is a saga in and of itself.  I have a feeling it'll go down on my "most embarrassing post list," which is indeed a feat.)