Birthday girl gets her entire EYELID ripped off by chihuahua while getting her lashes done
A BIRTHDAY girl went to get her eyelashes done for her party - only for her entire EYELID to be TORN OFF by the lash technician's chihuahua.
Kelsey Salmon had wanted to get her eyelashes done for her birthday and a long-planned holiday to Hawaii - but ended up spending her special day recovering in bed after undergoing surgery to have her eyelid reattached.
But after finding her usual technician was fully booked, the 23-year-old instead found an alternative on Instagram - a decision she soon lived to regret.
Moments after her beauty treatment finished, the technician's dog - which she had been stroking happily earlier - lunged at her in an unprovoked attack.
Horrifying photos show Kelsey's entire eyelid lay discarded still with her brand new extensions still attached, while other images show her looking at the camera with her entire left eyeball exposed.
The sales development representative ended up spending her birthday waiting hours in hospital before she underwent emergency surgery to reattach the flesh, leaving it sewn shut for 10 days.
Medics have warned the wound will take up to a year to heal.
TikTok videos Kelsey made about her ordeal in which she understandably dubbed it the 'worst lash extension experience' went viral, with two of them racking up a combined 8.1million views.
Kelsey, from Atlanta, Georgia, US, said: "It took place at the girl's apartment, and this was the first time I'd ever met her. The living room was empty, aside from a lash bed in the middle of the room.
"I lay down to get started, and I could hear the dog barking in her room. This chihuahua runs in and jumps up on the bed. I start petting him, everything's fine.
"Eventually, she's finished with the lashes and I sit up. The dog's sitting on the floor, I look down at him and he's just staring at me.
"Then, out of nowhere - it happened so fast that I didn't have time to pull back - he jumped up, bit me in the face and broke my eyelid off.
"It happened so fast that at the time, I didn't know what he'd grabbed. There was blood everywhere, and I was trying to catch the blood, saying 'What did he grab?'
"My eyelid was on the floor, and the girl picked it up. I looked at myself in my front camera and that's when I started freaking out.
"I'm so lucky he didn't grab onto my actual eye because that could have been a thousand times worse.
"I was bawling my eyes out, she gave me a dirty blanket off the floor to stop my bleeding. She's calling the ambulance; I'm calling my mum to meet me at the hospital.
"When I got to the hospital, I ended up waiting for like seven hours. They didn't have any ocular plastic surgeons at this hospital.
"My paramedics had wrapped up my eyelid in gauze and put it on ice. The nurse felt adamant that nothing could be done.
"I ended up leaving to go to another hospital at 8pm, and I didn't go into surgery until 1am.
"My mum sat right next to me the whole time; I don't know how she did that. Feeling it was bad, but watching it would be worse, I feel like.
"I was in and out during the reattachment process. It felt like half an hour to me, but I was later told that the operation took two hours."
Kelsey's eyelid is recovering well but could take up to a year to fully heal.
Kelsey said: "They honestly didn't think the eyelid was going to take, because none of the doctors or nurses I spoke to had seen a full eyelid come off.
"They were in uncharted territory. They were hopeful but the odds were against me.
"I now take antibiotic drops four times a day, and I also put on a prescription gel four times a day - just to keep it moist.
"They wanted my eye to be able to breathe during the day, but at night I'm wearing a metal eyepatch with holes.
"At the moment, my eye is all stitched up with dissolvable stitches. It should open eventually.
"I had my surgery on May 29th and I had a check-up again on June 2nd. My surgeon and all the other doctors were shocked that it was even healing and that it had colour.
"It shouldn't have worked. They were very surprised and glad it worked. They gave me the go-ahead to go to Hawaii.
"But even whilst I was on holiday, I was advised to go see a doctor by my surgeon back home. She thought the eyelid looked super dark.
"This doctor thought I had flesh-eating bacteria which would be super detrimental. When he saw me, he told me I was fine, but put me on an oral antibiotic for seven days just in case."
In addition to the physical discomfort, Kelsey has to deal with the judgement of others - both online and in real life.
Kelsey said: "I didn't have any trouble flying to Hawaii, other than the fact that everybody was staring at me.
"I felt like a freak. Whilst I was traveling, it happened so much that I got to my wit's end with it.
"Whilst I was at a layover in Los Angeles, I had a girl sat opposite me who was staring directly at me. No matter how many times I made eye contact with her, she wouldn't look away.
"She had friends with her, and she would tap their shoulders and whisper to them. They were all looking at me, and that was my breaking point.
"I said to them 'Take a picture, it'll last longer.' My mum had always taught me not to point and not to stare, but people do it anyway.
"It's a great way to make somebody feel bad. I'm confident but it does make me feel like s**t. Having people look at you when you go out will get you down.
"On TikTok, I mainly get positive comments but there are still a lot of negative people. There are different types of negative people.
"There's some people who will say 'I don't want to see this, don't film this', whereas other people just make fun of my appearance and crack jokes.
"A lot of people have made assumptions that I provoked the dog by getting in its face. A lot of people were asking about the dog. How about me? Why not ask how I'm doing?"
Kelsey has since documented her recovery on TikTok after the first video went viral and wants people to learn lessons from her experiences.
In the video, Kelsey showed pictures of her injury and said: "I can't even close my eye. Now it's sewn shut for ten days."
Kelsey said: "It's hard to see this happen to someone else, and I don't want it to happen to anybody.
"Because I'm looking out of one eye, I get an eye ache. I get migraines, I don't trust myself to drive yet. There's a lot of little things - your eye affects a lot.
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