British mum hospitalised after severe sunburns leave her in excruciating pain

Over the last weekend, temperatures reached unbearable levels in the UK and while many took advantage of the hot sunny weather to get their tan on, this mother was left with extremely painful sunburns that sent her straight to the hospital.

Extreme burns

31-year-old Danielle Fitzsimons, a single mum from Newtownstewart in Northern Ireland, visited Buncrana Beach for the weekend with her dad and her two kids. Before heading to the beach, she lathered her body with SPF 30 Malibu Lotion Spray to protect her skin from the sun and claims to have reapplied the lotion multiple times in the mere three hours she spent on the beach.

However by Monday, her back was covered with blisters that kept her awake at night and when she went to the hospital she discovered that she had second degree burns all over her back. She said:

I'm covered in thousands of little blisters and my skin's all torn off. The pain is horrendous and I'm lucky if I get more than an hour's sleep per night.

People at the hospital said it's about as close as you can get to third-degree burns from the sun. They had me on gas and air to do the bandages and I've been nearly every day since.

Ineffective sunscreen

Fitzsimons said that normally she’s not the type of person who gets burned by the sun, which is why the incident completely shocked her. She admitted that during this trip she had applied a new sunscreen that she had bought from ASDA which boasted a higher protection, but unfortunately the product didn’t keep up to its promises. She said:

We normally go to Home Bargains to get sun cream, but this time I went to ASDA and I saw this had high UV protection from the sun so that's why I bought it.

I applied the cream before I even left the house, then I applied it when I got there and then while I was there too. I think that's more than enough times to apply it.

Now, the single mother is in the process of filing a complaint against London-based company Malibu.