Monthly Archives: May 2026

Washing Hair After Cataract Surgery: The safety swimming goggles hack

Posted in beauty, Hair care, hair treatment, Health & Wellness, lifestyle, Scent, Uncategorized, Wellbeing by
Aveda Botanical Repair and swimming goggles
Aveda botanical repair and swimming goggles

Recovering from cataract surgery required a brief pause in my usual haircare routine. While the procedure itself was quick, the post-operative care required some serious thoughtโ€”especially when it came to everyday tasks like hair washing.

Having worn contact lenses for years, I was already hyper-aware that getting water into your eyes can introduce unwanted bacteria. Because it is absolutely vital to keep water, soap, and pressure completely away from the healing eye during the first week, the prospect of washing my hair felt incredibly daunting.

Today, I want to share my exact personal experience, the clever safety hacks I used to navigate this transition smoothly, and how I turned a medical restriction into a comforting, holistic self-care ritual.

Post-Op care:

Wooden comb through wet hair

My Step-by-Step Post-Op Hair Routine

If you are nervous about getting your face wet, you do not have to rush into a full wash immediately. Here is the exact, protective routine I used to stay fresh while keeping my healing eye completely dry:

Days 1โ€“3: Refresh with Dry Shampoo

For the first few days after the operation, I didn’t wash my hair with water at all. Instead, I opted for a high-quality dry shampoo. This completely removed the risk of accidental splashes during those critical early days while keeping my scalp clean and comfortable.

Day 4 Onwards: The Swimming Goggles & “Backward Tilt” hair wash

When it was finally time for a proper wash, I came up with a plan using a pair of swimming goggles I had originally purchased for a beach holiday last year.

Swimming goggles create an excellent physical seal to protect your eyes from stray drops of water or running soap. For an extra layer of safety, I placed a couple of dry cotton wool pads inside the lens area over my treated eye before putting the goggles on.

Once secured, I stepped into the shower, turned completely around so the shower head faced my back, and aimed the water stream carefully while keeping my head tilted firmly backward. This ensured that the water splashed exclusively over my forehead and down my back, draining safely away from my face.

Haircare Tip: I repeated this exact process a month later when I had my second eye operated on, and it worked perfectly both times.

Elevating the Experience with Plant-Powered Care

Once safely in the shower, I wanted to use products that offered genuine therapeutic and botanical benefits. For a very long time, I have been a fan of Avedaโ€™s Botanical Repair range. Built on ancient Ayurvedic philosophies, this collection focuses on holistic balance and uses plant-powered, bond-building technology to naturally strengthen hair without heavy, stripping chemicals.

The aroma alone transforms the bathroom into a spa. It fills the air with a calming, blend of lavender, rosemary, ylang-ylang, and marjoram.

Why I Trust This Range (Especially Post-Menopause)

This range has been my absolute go-to since navigating menopause, a time when I noticed my hair beginning to lose its original thickness, strength, and lustre.

Engineered around a plant-based, triple-layer repair technology, the formula works systematically to restore compromised hair:

  1. The Cortex: Micro-molecules derived from corn or sugarcane penetrate the inner layer of the hair shaft to build structural bonds from within.
  2. The Cuticle: A nourishing macro-green blend of sacha inchi, green tea seed, and avocado oils mimics the hair’s natural outer layer to smooth the cuticle and detangle strands beautifully without heavy silicones.
  3. The F-Layer: Coconut and corn derivatives replicate the hair’s outermost, water-resistant barrier, locking in a healthy shine and guarding against environmental damage.

I usually shampoo twice. Because the formula is highly concentrated, a very small amount goes an incredibly long way.

My can’t live without product is the Aveda Botanical Repair Leave-In Treatment. It brilliantly acts as a protective conditioner and a styling product all in one. Because it shields hair from heat damage while smoothing frizz perfectly, I find I don’t need to apply any additional styling creams or gelsโ€”keeping my haircare routine wonderfully simple.

Because you want to minimize any tangles, tugging, or pulling anywhere near your face right now, I use a wide-tooth wooden comb to gently detangle your hair, always working mindfully from the ends up to the roots.

From my motherโ€™s garden to mine

Lavender harvest
Lavender harvested from the garden

Every time I open these bottles, the herbal aroma instantly reminds me of my childhood home. Growing up, my mother cultivated both rosemary and lavender in our family garden, harvesting them regularly to brew a traditional, homemade hair rinse. She used it on our hair constantly to give it an incredible, healthy shine, but she also knew the functional secrets of those plants: their powerful, natural antibacterial and protective properties.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), these two botanical powerhouses represent a beautiful Yin and Yang balance for total scalp health:

  • Rosemary (Mi Die Xiang ็ฑณ่ฟญ้ฆ™): A warming herb known to stimulate the movement of Qi (energy) and blood circulation. In TCM, hair health is a direct reflection of blood vitality. By stimulating the scalp, rosemary delivers essential nutrients directly to the hair follicles.
  • Lavender (Xun Yi Cao ่–ฐ่กฃ่‰): A cooling, calming herb that clears heat and soothes cutaneous irritation, perfectly balancing the energetic warmth of the rosemary.

Today, I grow both rosemary and lavender in my own garden. At the end of every season, I lovingly harvest the lavender and tie them into fragrant bundles, placing them in vases all around my home. It acts as a completely natural air freshener that feels exceptionally fresh and deeply grounding all at once. In TCM, these ambient botanical scents soothe the Shen(the spirit and mind), making the entire home feel like a peaceful sanctuary during recovery.

A time for patient healing

Recovering from surgery is a gentle reminder that our bodies deserve time, patience, and protection. By pairing the practical safety of swimming goggles with the timeless, plant-powered wisdom passed down by my mother, a simple shower can transcend a medical chore and become a moment of deep healing.

If you are preparing for your own surgery, take it one slow, mindful step at a time. Put on your goggles, tilt your head back, and let nature lend you a helping hand!

Disclaimer: Always follow your specific ophthalmologist’s instructions regarding when you can safely wet your hair and face after surgery, as individual recovery timelines and protocols may vary.

How scent from my garden became an act of self-care

Posted in In the garden, lifestyle, Perfume, Scent, Uncategorized, Wellbeing by
Cut roses from garden by my workspace
Scented roses from the garden

I had a busy work week and last Friday, I found myself heading off to the A&E to have a sebaceous cyst looked at, after the nurse at my GP said they couldnโ€™t help me further after a course of antibiotics the practice had prescribed.

When I finally returned home after the long wait to see one of the consultants, knowing that I had to go back on Saturday, because they couldnโ€™t treat me that day, I turned to my happy place; the roses that I had planted about 3 years ago, now coming beautifully into bloom.

Cutting a few stems and placing them in a vase on my desk made me feel happy, a welcome distraction from hospitals and what that entailed. I cut some rosemary and placed this in a vase so it would sit on my windowsill behind my desk.

The science of the “Happy Place”

We often think of comforting fragrances as a luxury, but modern science proves they are a physiological intervention. There is a profound medical field called Psychoneuroimmunologyโ€”the study of how our emotional brain interacts directly with our nervous and immune systems.

When we experience sudden trauma or work related stress, our bodies flood with cortisol (the stress hormone). In clinical studies, high cortisol levels have been shown to delay physical wound healing by up to 50%*. It slows down cellular repair and constricts microcirculation.

Scent can be a shortcut straight to the limbic systemโ€”the brain’s ancient emotional control centre. 

So when you inhale an authentic, uplifting botanical fragrance, your brain instantly signals your nervous system to switch off the “fight-or-flight” response. By dropping your cortisol levels, a happy scent physically allows your body to redirect its resources toward cellular recovery and healing. 

My garden brings comfort to my mind, and it is also a way to help repair my body.

I have to admit that I had not tended to the roses and only purchased soil improver to ensure the roses would bloom over the coming months and some rose fertiliser, sprinkled around them and raked in.

From Garden to Bottle: Bringing the Antidote Indoors

They are now entering their most beautiful phase of growth, so each morning before doing anything else, I will take a pair of secateurs and give them a light pruning, taking away spent rose heads so that the plants continue to bloom well into autumn.

While I am fortunate to watch Gertrude Jekyll and The Poetโ€™s Wife bloom right outside my window, you donโ€™t need a mature cut-flower garden to harness this therapeutic power. The beauty industry has long looked to these exact heritage botanical profiles to create scents that do more than just make us smell goodโ€”they alter how we feel.

The roses were an investment – I guess looking back little did I know they are also an act of self-care.

If you are looking to bring this grounding, anti-stress ritual into your daily routine, you can explore it through fragrances such as:

  • Affordable budget friendly High-Street Everyday Mist: For a light, accessible burst of morning optimism, The Body Shop’s British Rose offers a clean, dewy, straight-from-the-flowerbed freshness that acts as a perfect midday pick-me-up at your desk.
  • Historic rose scent : To truly replicate the timeless, old-world rose experience, look to L’Occitaneโ€™s classic Rose Eau de Toilette. It beautifully captures the elegant, velvet depth of traditional rose speciesโ€”the very same historic heritage varieties you can source and plant in your own space via David Austin Roses.
  • Luxurious and Aromatic: If you want the a sophisticated pairing of floral and herbal notes with white musk, Jo Malone Londonโ€™s Rose & White Musk Absolu is the ultimate luxury. By weaving authentic rosewater with sharp, earthy rosemary, it has a crisp scent that helps with mental clarity.

Cataract Surgery & Skincare: Discovering new anti-aging products

Posted in beauty, eye care, Make-up, makeup, Skin Care, Skincare, Wellbeing by
Waterless cleansing routine with Curel makeup remover

Cataract Surgery and elevating my skincare

I wanted to share this post with you as I found that whilst there is plenty of information about what a cataract is and how to treat it in terms of surgery, I found that there was very little written about skincare, make-up for women and how to navigate skincare during the recovery process.

About the surgery – I am very short sighted and as I mentioned in my previous article I relied on multifocal contact lenses and varifocal glasses. But recently, the prescription kept changing so after some appointments with the consultant and optician, I decided to have Multifocal cataract lenses (intraocular lenses or IOLs) paying a premium and going through the surgery through health insurance instead of the NHS in the UK. The procedure would be about a month apart, fist the left eye then right.

Navigating the weeks following cataract surgery meant being careful to follow the advice, antibiotic eye drops that tapered from four times a day down to one.

Navigating hygiene, healing, skincare after Multifocal Lens Surgery

I had given a lot of thought during the lead-up to the operation in terms of how I would need to update my skincare routine. I didn’t want to take any chances during recovery, so I searched for an effective cleanser that did not need water. I found individually wrappedย Neutrogena wipes.

Neutrogena makeup removing sachets
Neutrogena sachets, a hygienic way to cleanse after cataract surgery

The surgeon said standard care was fine, but in my marketing career, Iโ€™ve learned to mitigate any risk is the key to a successful launchโ€”or in this case, a successful recovery.

In fact the recovery in terms of my sight returning was rapid, by the following morning, I could see rom the eye that I had the surgery and within a week, my sight was better than the eye (with contact lens).

It was however a challenge in terms of skincare, because I needed to maintain hygiene by ensuring no water would get into my left eye, having been told for years during my time wearing contact

lenses that tap water included water borne bacteria, I wasn’t going to take any chances until my eye had fully heald. The surgeon avoid getting water in my eye for a week, but I decided I would keep my eyes away from water for at least 2 weeks. And by the final week of my eye-drop schedule, I attempted to return to my “normal” routine.

It was January, and my skin was vulnerable, the cold air outdoors would leave my face feeling taut red and stinging, I realized that returning to my previous routine with water was making my skin taught and uncomfortable. I could start wearing make-up by week 2, but I worried about removing make-up especially any make-up around the eye.

Cleaning without water: Why I Switched to Curel during recovery

This is where my recovery journey turned into a discovery for my daily life. I realised that if my skin was this sensitive during a medical “stress test,” it deserved a more sophisticated, less aggressive approach every single day.

The Mature Skin Revelation On my return from work one evening, I made a quick stop at Boots drug store on my way home and looked for a cleanser that would be gentle and need no water. I had previously used the foaming Curel cleanser, which is very gentle but needed water. I found the brand also has a waterless product called Curel Makeup Cleansing Gel. Instead of water and rubbing, this gel uses Ceramides, which would help to repair the skin barrier while swiping away heavy sunscreen make-up and impurities. The gel is highly effective, and felt like “comforting” sigh of relief to my stressed skin.

A Bee-Powered secret: Using IUNIK propolis for Mature Eye Care

To compliment this, I focussed on the most delicate area: the eyes. I traded my old creams for IUNIK, a Korean brand featuring Propolis. This “bee powered” ingredient isn’t just for healing; it has anti-aging properties. Proplis acts as a natural antimicrobial shield while deeply hydrating to prevent fine lines, a perfect cream to use during the immediate days after surgery.

What started as a necessary skincare routine after surgery has become my go-to for aging gracefully. By treating my mature skin with the gentlest of products, “zero-rub” care required for medical recovery, Iโ€™ve found a routine that doesn’t just cleanโ€”it restores.