As I wind down 2014, I’m trying to take care of some loose medical issues so I can start the new year fresh. Or if not fresh, then with less decay. I’ve addressed teeth, feet, eyes, nerves, muscles, muffin-tops, hips and elbow skin. Now, with less than a month left in the year, I come to find out that I also have an eyelash problem.
If there was cancer of the eyelash, I would probably have it. And I’m not saying for sure that there’s not. Cancer has become a show-offy attention hog, claiming body parts that I didn’t even know we had.
It’s most likely not cancer, but my eyelash problem is enough to make my opthamologist sit up, bend forward in that I’m-going-to-kiss-you-now way that they have, and take notice.
She discovered it during an office visit for a rashy and swollen eyelid. There also was a tiny bump near the eyelash region. Normally I would have Neosporined the heck out of it, like I do all the other things wrong with my body. Neosporin is the duct tape/WD40 of my medicine cabinet. If whatever I have can’t be cleared up with Neosporin, then it’s probably how God intended me to be. But this time, I was kind of on a campaign to take care of my growing list of health issues like a normal middle class American with PPO benefits.
“Oh that’s just a warty knob. Non-malignant,” the doctor said, poking at my eyelid bump. And just to be sure that telling me I’m the proud owner of a warty knob wasn’t enough to make me feel as unattractive as humanly possible, she added, “It’s close to, but not related to this space here in your eyelashes. It’s not a big deal, just a blank space, but some people don’t like eyelash problems.”
I was grateful she didn’t call the space a bald spot, which is what I had been calling it. I had noticed it, of course – my makeup mirror is magnified enough to see individual skin cells – and dealt with it by putting extra mascara on the hairs on either side of it. That and Neosporin had been taking care of the problem as far as I was concerned.
The doctor suggested I take Latisse, a thing that used to be prescribed for glaucoma, until doctors realized that one of the side effects was that the users developed long, full, dark lashes. They were like, Hmmm. People with glaucoma used to be the filmy-eyed people we felt sorry for. And now they’re the ones with long, lustrous lashes. How can we make this not so? So they hired a marketing firm and kicked the poor blind glaucoma-y people to the curb and said, “Sorry, but there’s no money in saving people’s sight. Long lashes are the way to make it big these days.”
My doctor whipped out a Latisse brochure and said, “I’m not paid to promote this.” And then she let out a little laugh and held up her hands as if she were warding off a barrage of angry townspeople with torches. I read the laugh to mean but you and I both know that’s not true. What kind of crazy world would we live in if physicians had to rely on only Blue Cross and Obamacare to make money? Ha ha ha ha – ooooh, good one.
The Latisse brochure featured a color photo of a eyeball model. I had to admit, her eyelashes were pretty nice looking. And there were no bald spots and she was relatively wart-free.
She briefly went over the other options, one of which is eyelash extensions, which is exactly as complicated, other-worldly and moronic as it sounds. I’m still not over the hilarity that some women get hair extensions on their regular head.
“Oh god, no, I’m not doing that,” I said, ending that conversation. Do I look like the kind of woman who would get eyelash extensions?
“Think about it and let me know,” the doctor said. Then she told me Latisse costs $180 for the first six-week supply and that you need that much to start to see results. Once you stop taking it, your eyelashes go back to their previous pitiful, working class selves, like a cruel joke. But she assured me that continuing on the Latisse plan would grow eyelash hairs out of my bald spot and then some. A side benefit, she added, would be that I wouldn’t have to wear mascara, which would help in warding off the rashy, swollen eyelids and wart. In other words, this stuff was going to make me all kinds of gorgeous in the eyelash region.
I took the brochure home and threw it in the trash and went to my go-to source for medical advice: The Internet. The before and after pictures were pretty amazing. But if you look at enough of them, you start to get suspicious. Like all before and after pictures, the women in the after pictures were obviously jazzed up a bit. Like all before pictures, the models have expressions that suggest they just got done with a yard sale or hosting a 3-year-old’s birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese. They were wearing stained sweatshirts or what looked like a robe. In the after pictures, they’re wearing sequin tops and have had their teeth whitened.
Just for fun, I Googled eyelash extensions. Beyonce, one or more Kardashian, and the mom on Modern Family all had them, which proves an earlier point I had about why Claire Dunfy’s character looks like a Hollywood actress when she’s supposed to be the normal mom. She’s normal like I’m married to Jay Z and go clubbing with the Hiltons.
So now I’m wondering if I should spring for the $180 of Latisse, pitch the Neosporin and the mascara, and embrace my inner eyelash beauty. I’m not going for eyelash model, but I would like to get rid of the bald spot before I start to lose my eyebrows.
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Read more of Diane’s Just Humor Me columns here. Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter to get new blog post notifications. And if you like her blog, you’ll love her book, Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.
