Girls Suffer From Severe Burns After Playing With Limes

Stephanie Ellwanger experienced a parent’s worst nightmare as she watched as a mysterious burn spread across her daughters skin in what turned out to be a second-degree burn caused by lime juice.

Many (including myself) enjoy limes as a part of their drink, or straight up as a delicious piece of fruit, so it’s no wonder why Ellwanger didn’t suspect them to be the cause of her daughter’s ailment.

Hanford Sentinel reported that what first seemed to be overexposure to the sun blossomed into softball-sized blisters and second-degree burns.

The report continued on to say that Ellwanger’s girls, Jewels, 12, and Jazmyn, 9, wound up spending several days in an intensive care unit, hooked up to morphine to manage the pain.

So what happened to cause such a drastic reaction to the fruit?

Ellwanger had taken the girls to her mother’s house for a pool party and three of her daughters’ friends, Reyghan, Candy and Bailey, had joined them.

Later that night, Ellwanger noticed some redness around the girls’ mouths, which over the next few hours began to blister and worsen as Ellwagner tried to help make it better.

Not only worried about her own girl’s health, she also started to worry about their friends too, and after calling the parents of all three girls, Ellwanger found out they all were suffering from the bad sunburns, blisters, redness.

Denise Kinser said she woke up to the sound of her daughter, Candy, screaming at the top of her lungs.

“It’s the worst sound a mother can ever hear,” she said. “My little girls crying, saying it hurts, and having no idea what is the matter. No mother should ever go through that.”

Hanford Sentinel reported that both of Kinser’s daughters, Candy and Bailey, had blisters so bad that their skin “looked like hamburger meat.”

After all five girls were admitted to the hospitals, doctors found that they were all suffering from second-degree burns covering 15 percent of their bodies.

MSN Now reported that doctors discovered the girls were suffering from phytophotodermatitis, described as “a chemical reaction [to the lime juice] that makes bare skin hypersensitive to ultraviolet light.”

The girls had been playing with limes from a neighbor’s tree, squeezing the fruits and splashing in the juice.

All five girls spent a total of two weeks in the hospital recovering from their burns, but reports have said that their future remains uncertain.

The doctors are advising all of the girls to stay indoors for six months, if not longer.

“They can’t be sure that they’ve healed all the way,” Ellwanger said. “We’re not sure if it’ll reactivate next time they go out into sunlight.”

“I feel guilty. When you send your kids off with another parent, you expect them to come back unharmed,” Ellwanger said. “I guess we learn the hard way. Who would’ve known that these innocent little fruits could do so much damage?”

Hanford Sentinel stated that Kinser’s girls will have to be home schooled this year, and all five girls won’t be able to participate in sports this year.

Ellwanger is working hard to spread the word of what happened to her girls and their friends in order to make sure no other parent has to go through watching their children suffer from severe burns from fruits such as limes.

[photo credit: libraryman via photopin cc]