Allergic to Summer: Sun Allergy Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe sun allergy, mostly polymorphous light eruption, the itchy rash that flares on sun-exposed skin each spring and summer. Writers first met it on a honeymoon in the Greek islands, backpacking in Thailand, at a music festival, at five months pregnant and at sixty-three. They include a mountain guide, a sheep farmer during lambing, a sailing instructor, a golf course groundskeeper, a fly-in fly-out mine worker, a varsity baseball coach, a postman walking eleven miles a day, and a retired piano teacher who learned its name at seventy. Places range from Tromso to Seville and Toledo, Ohio to Stellenbosch. Several with brown or Black skin were told it could not happen to them, or were treated for eczema for years. Writers describe a lupus scare and blood tests, fears of skin cancer, an allergy to sunscreen itself found through testing, a little light each day, light treatment that clashed with ICU shifts, steroid tablets before a beach holiday, hydroxychloroquine, supplements bought online, UV index apps and arm sleeves. Children appear too: a nine-year-old's blistered ears, a twelve-year-old who inherited it. Not everything settled: some still flare every spring, one teacher's itch never showed as a rash, and one social worker needed help with the worry as much as the skin.

Who it's for

For anyone who dreads the first sunny week, has been told it is only heat rash, or is watching a child or partner cover up while everyone else heads for the beach.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 239 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.