A young woman developed severe sun poisoning and was told she looked like an alien after falling asleep on the beach.
Bela Chatwin, now 21, said her three-year-old sister didn’t recognise her because her face had swollen so badly.
The interior design assistant says she’d normally wear sunscreen and had planned to put it on but accidentally fell asleep and didn’t wake up for five hours.
It was also a cloudy day and not that hot, she explained.
A doctor told her she had sun poisoning, which is a severe case of sunburn, usually from ultraviolet radiation.
It took three weeks for Bela to recover, helped by steroid-based creams.
She says it turned out she has photodermatitis – a lifelong allergy to the sun.
Because she’d always applied sun cream so diligently it had never been an issue before.
Bela now swears she’ll never make the same mistake again – and encourages others not use SPF.
The ill-fated day happened in San Diego, California, in the US, in April 2018 when she was on holiday with her friend and their family.
The two mates, both 16 at the time, went on a solo trip to the beach when the temperature was only between 18C and 22C.
Bela, from Lehi, Utah, US, explained: ‘That day it was just me and my friend at the beach, and it was bright but cloudy and not that hot.
‘I fell asleep for about five hours – I thought my friend would wake me up, but she fell asleep too.
When Bella woke up her skin wasn’t initially red, but she said she felt ‘exhausted’ despite her unplanned nap.
‘The next day I was bright red, and my face started getting puffy and blistered,’ she continued.
‘I realised it was a bigger deal than just normal sunburn – at its worst, I could barely open my eyes.
‘Total strangers were coming up to me asking what was wrong and my sister didn’t even recognise me.
‘The blisters began to pop, and it was so gross – whenever I went outside, I’d wear a surgical mask to cover up.’
At one point Bela was vomiting several times a day.
She said a doctor told her it was the worst case of sun poisoning he’d ever seen.
‘It took about three weeks to get fully better – but at first I was worried I’d look like that permanently,’ she added.
‘I cried about it a lot, I didn’t want anyone to see me – I got told I looked like a turtle or an alien.’
Bela has since been very careful to always apply sun cream, even if it’s cloudy or not that hot.
And thankfully she hasn’t had a reaction.
She added: ‘Now I know you should be careful no matter what – it could happen to anyone.
‘Looking back, I can laugh about it now – how I looked was hilarious.
‘But it was absolutely horrific to experience, and I never want that to happen again.’
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