Thursday, September 05, 2013

Girls suffered second-degree burns from fruit

It was supposed to be a fun summer day for Stephanie Ellwanger's two daughters and their friends, an afternoon the friends spent splashing in Ellwanger's mother's pool in Hanford, California.



Later that night, all five girls broke out in a red rash that turned into massive, painful blisters. They were eventually hospitalised, and the baffled doctors initially thought they'd been the victims of chemical burns, until Ellwanger said that was in no way possible.



Ellwanger later remembered that they'd played with limes from a neighbour's tree, squeezing the fruits and splashing in the juice. The girls were then diagnosed with phytophotodermatitis, described as "a chemical reaction [to the lime juice] that makes bare skin hypersensitive to ultraviolet light."



After being hospitalised for two weeks, spending several days in an intensive care unit hooked up to morphine to manage the pain, they've been ordered to stay out of the sun for at least six months, and maybe permanently. "I feel guilty," Ellwanger said. "Who would've known these innocent little fruits could do so much damage."

7 comments:

Sandy said...

That happened to me once during a beach vacation. I had mixed up a thermos of gin and tonics and didn't remember the lime until we were ready to go. I just squeezed several into the thermos and left without washing my hands. I spent the day in the sun, and noticed some pain in between my fingers just before dinner. By bedtime, I had giant blisters between my fingers. The dermatologist who figured it out said it's called "Florida State Disease" because a lot of people suffered from it after attending a Florida State football game where they were drinking g & ts. So. Random.

arbroath said...

How strange!

Miss Cellania said...

Phytophotodermatitis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophotodermatitis

arbroath said...

Thanks Miss C!

Anonymous said...

Serves them right for destroying the neighbor's lime tree.

ergooden said...

Yeah, pretty sure nothing was mentioned about "destroying" the lime tree, you fool.

There's (at least) one in every comment section ...

Anonymous said...

I feel really bad for these girls. I am very familiar with pain, but from what I've heard, this blows what I've been through out of the water and gives a whole new meaning to the word. The Ellwanger girls are part of my family, so I know quite a bit about what happened, and the doctors actually didn't expect the youngest of the five to live. The way Jewels described it was "a hundred needles just going into one spot." And they had that kind of pain all over their bodies!
(FYI: They didn't "destroy" the tree. They just picked a dozen or so limes.)