Hair Repair

Some of you know about my hair-coloring incident. I've made reference to it before. For those of you that don't, I'll do a semi-quick review in hopes of helping anyone that may have a similar mishap in the future. I noticed my first gray hairs at the age of 16. I started visiting a hairdresser for help, beginnning with highlights, and then having to eventually move to all-over coloring. I had someone else do the work until Jim and I got married. At that time, we were trying to sell my house, and for several months, were paying both a house payment and apt. payment, plus 2 truck notes, etc. You get the point. Getting my hair done professionally was certainly out of the question. I started coloring at home and have been now for almost 5 years. It really does save a LOT of money, and I was fairly satisfied with it until a recent mishap. Long story short, I guess someone had put the wrong color bottle in the box or it was old and had ruined....something went way wrong...my hair turned jet black with some reddish-purple highlights. Aiiii! I tried 2 boxes of my normal shade in an attempt to fix it, but to no avail. After calling around and learning that I should see a "professional colorist," who charged a minimum of $250, I decided to take my chances and visit a regular hairdresser. I found out it really was a big deal to fix. The chemicals had stripped my hair, and it soaked up the new dye so fast, my hair just kept getting darker. She finally colored it wet and only left it on about 2 or 3 minutes. That helped the color a little, but it still looked rough! At her suggestion, I bought a jar of hair mask/masque to help repair the damage. This happened in early January, and I've gone through 2 jars so far. It definitely makes a big difference. After it first happened, my hair was so broken that, without the mask, I couldn't even run a comb through it. It is much better now, but still has so much damage that I'm scared to do a full color again.

I do plan on continuing to color it myself; I just can't justify spending that kind of money at this point in our lives, and I'm not yet ready to "grow old gracefully." ;) I'm still hoping to repair the damage enough to go ahead and color it all over soon, so that is why I purchased the three jars of hair mask this past week. (Not to mention, I got them for free! Yah, CVS) To keep the gray at bay in the meantime, though, I'm using a different product. When I was pregnant, I used Nice and Easy Root Touch-Up because it has very little fumes and only has to stay on 10 minutes. I'm using it now to color only the new growth and waiting for the old to grow off. It works well, but only lasts about 3 weeks.

My advice: Coloring it myself saves a ton of money every year. Though I did have to pay for a visit to make it go-out-in-public ok, it was no more than it a typical visit to get it colored, and look how many of those trips I've not had to pay for over 5 years. I've also bought 5 jars of mask to help fix the problem, but only paid for 2 of them. If a mishap should occur, don't try to fix it yourself. Go immediately to a hairdresser and let them work on it before you add to the damage.