I've never been happy to wake up in the morning, look in the bathroom mirror, and find a huge, red zit staring back at me.
It's a bad feeling, and I'm sure almost everyone agrees with me.
Pimples suck. There are a million creams, masks, and old wives' tales out there that claim to get rid of them quickly, but I haven't found anything that works.
Most of the time, we resort to popping pimples.
It's almost always a bad idea to pop a pimple, and plenty of people know this, myself included. It can make the pimple worse, or lead to a scar.
Regardless, we continue to do it.
That's exactly what Katie Wright did when she found an uncomfortable spot under her skin — but it turned out to be much more than your typical zit. Popping it sent Katie to the hospital and nearly blinded her.
Keep reading to find out why Katie's pimple was so dangerous, and what you can do to protect yourself.
Thumbnail Photo: Twitter / KatieWright
[H/T: Huffington Post]
This is Katie. According to the Huffington Post, Katie is a 21-year-old from Austin, Texas.
When Katie found a large, painful pimple underneath her skin, she started to pick at it. The pimple was near her eyebrowand had been hurting for a while. She thought popping it might help the pain.
But within the hour, Katie's pimple was swelling up. She wrote that it "felt like something was going to burst out of my skin."
Katie was in so much pain that she rushed to the emergency room. When she got there, the doctors told her something shocking.
Katie didn't just have a pimple — she had a severe case of cellulitis, a form of staph infection. The fact that Katie's infection was on her face made it especially serious. Doctors told her that the staph could have spread to her brain or her eyes, blinding her.
Doctors told Katie that she most likely contracted the scary infection from her makeup brushes, which can carry bacteria on them. Katie says she takes good care of her brushes, but never thought to clean her eyebrow spoolie. This is most likely where her infection came from.
According to HuffPost, Katie had to stay in the hospital for four days to heal her infection. HuffPost spoke to Dr. Jessica Krant of State University of New York's Downstate Medical Center. Dr. Krant says cellulitis is often mistaken for pimples, but it's much more dangerous. If it moves from the skin to the bloodstream, it can enter the "eye socket, brain, sinuses, joints, or bones." Infection in these areas can be hard to treat and leave lasting, scary damage.
Katie, now recovered, posted about her scary health incident online, hoping others would see her post and learn to take more care of their makeup brushes, and stop popping pimples, even if they don't look suspicious. Dr. Krant says that "popping a pimple is always a risk. Always." Instead of popping, she recommends speaking to a dermatologist. Luckily, Katie is OK, and hopefully her story will save others from the same scary infection.
Please SHARE Katie's story on Facebook to help prevent even more scary situations like this one.
