At the start of the school year, my morning skincare routine consisted of scratching my eyes, scratching the side of my face, putting on lotion and washing my face again. But my face’s moisture was gone, so I applied SPF and of course, scratched my face again then repeated this process. This was my daily skincare routine, although calling it one might be generous. It was more like a never-ending battle between me and the dryness of my own face.
Slowly but surely, the skin around my eyes started turning red. At first, I ignored this. But as the redness on my face became more noticeable, I eventually looked in the mirror and realized I looked like I had been stamped with a Target logo. Why was this happening? I was scratching my entire face, so why were only my eyes facing all of the consequences?
My first thought was allergies. My friend Isabella is allergic to grass, and whenever she touches it her eyes puff up so badly that she can barely see. I figured maybe my eyes had decided to join the allergy club without inviting the rest of me. Then, one morning, I woke up and could not fully open my eyes. Fantastic. I did what any medically inclined future physician would do, I put ice on it. Yet nothing improved.
In this failure, I was both concerned and personally offended. I needed to find answers, so I began investigating my own face like I was solving an episode of CSI: Skincare Unit. I first suspected my new CeraVe moisturizer. But CeraVe is basically the Switzerland of skincare, neutral, trustworthy and seemingly incapable of causing drama. It seemed too innocent to be guilty.
My second suspect: my makeup. More specifically, my new mascara. This was devastating, I had spent $30 on a Tarte mascara and now I had to throw it away. I cried, not because of my eye but because of the mascara. After throwing the mascara away I decided to buy a different one. Clearly, that did not make the situation any better
I gave the new mascara a week, but nothing improved. Every morning, I woke up with the same red circle around my eye. At this point, I had fully transitioned from “girl getting ready for the day” to “Target employee of the month,” given the bullseyes on my face. Naturally, this happened during sorority recruitment, a week of outfits, makeup, pictures and approximately 700 photographs taken from different angles. Unfortunately, my face had other plans for me.
So, I stopped wearing makeup for an entire week. I simplified my skincare routine to CeraVe, La Roche-Posay and SPF. Luckily, this worked and the redness went away. I celebrated for approximately five minutes before it came back. At this point, I had simplified my skincare routine so much that I was basically washing my face with water and good intentions.
What else could it be?
Then I thought: food. I started mentally reviewing everything I had been eating recently and only one thing stood out, peanuts. I hated peanuts as a child, but college changed me. Suddenly, salted peanuts were the perfect snack because they were salty, crunchy and convenient. Could peanuts really be responsible for this? I had eaten foods containing peanuts for years, so it made absolutely no sense, but new allergies can develop throughout your life.Â
So I decided to consult the most convenient source available to me at 11 p.m., ChatGPT.
I sent a picture of my face and asked, “What is this?”. The bot offered me the very comforting answer of “possibly contact dermatitis or an allergic reaction”. Thank you, ChatGPT, this was very groundbreaking. But it did mention something important, allergies can develop over time. I had refused to believe it. There was no way I had suddenly become allergic to peanuts. I ate them constantly.
Still, I cut them out.
Every time I opened my pantry, the extra-long salted peanuts from Costco stared back at me. They knew what they had done. They sat there in their giant Costco-sized bag taunting me. They seemed to be saying, You really think it was us? Another week passed, and the rash came back.
At this point, I had eliminated makeup, most skincare products and peanuts. I started taking Zyrtec, an over-the-counter allergy medication, in the morning and decided I would simply have to live with the mystery until my allergist appointment that was scheduled for a month later. I even started wearing my glasses more often. This was not because I had suddenly become responsible about my vision, but because I did not want to look at my face. The glasses were my camouflage.
Then one day, everything changed.
I was sitting on the couch doing homework when my friend suddenly looked over at me. “Henna. Your eyes. They’re reacting right now”.
I ran to the bathroom, and she was right. Within what felt like seconds, the redness had spread across my face. I started to panic. What was I supposed to do? My friend called her mom, who was a nurse. Her mom called her sister, who was a doctor. At this point, I had accidentally assembled an entire medical consultation team.
The doctor’s advice was surprisingly simple: “Henna, wash your face with your CeraVe. Don’t put anything else on it. No moisturizer. No serum. Nothing. Just use Aquaphor to retain moisture”.
Aquaphor?
The same Aquaphor that had been sitting in my bathroom drawer all this time?Fine.
I washed my face, slathered on Aquaphor and waited. The swelling went down. The redness remained, and my skin was still raised. However, my face no longer felt like it was on fire. The next day, I did the same routine: Aquaphor, Hydrocortisone and then patience.
Then my skin started peeling. A lot.My face had decided to shed its previous identity.
But I trusted the process. Three days later, the flaking was gone. I touched the skin around my eye and realized something I had not felt in weeks: it was smooth. Like, really smooth.
I had spent weeks investigating every possible cause, eliminating products, blaming food, mourning a $30 mascara, consulting ChatGPT and wearing glasses as facial camouflage. And the solution… Aquaphor.
I cautiously wore makeup for one of our sorority recruitment rounds. When I got home, I immediately took it off and went back to my routine: Aquaphor, hydrocortisone, and patience. The next morning, I looked in the mirror.No rash. No swelling. No Target logo.
I still do not know exactly what caused the reaction. My allergist appointment will hopefully help me solve that part of the mystery, but the experience taught me something I did not expect. Medicine is not always about immediately knowing the answer. Sometimes, it is about paying attention to the small changes, recognizing patterns, eliminating possibilities, asking questions and knowing when to ask someone else for help.
My face had offered me a mystery, and I spent weeks trying to solve it. After all that detective work, the answer was not some rare disease or complicated treatment: It was Aquaphor.The magical elixir had been sitting in my bathroom the entire time. I was looking for a medical breakthrough when I really just needed petroleum jelly.