A woman who has a condition which means she can develop a painful reaction to sunlight in just minutes has opened up about how it has affected her life.
Sonal Keay, a UK-based criminal barrister and businesswoman, lives with a rare condition known as Chronic Actinic Dermatitis.
While most people associate the sun with the occasional bout of sunburn after spending too long outdoors, Sonal’s experience is far more extreme — she can break out in a painful rash after only a few minutes in daylight, something that has reshaped how she goes about everyday life.
She explained that she dealt with severe eczema as a child, which appeared to ease as she got older.
However, when she was around 17, she began suffering intense skin flare-ups after travelling abroad on holiday — and at the time, she had no clear idea what was triggering them.
“I suffered a really severe and painful reaction, and it just didn’t clear up at all,” she told Good Morning Britain.
“Every single time I was outside, every day I was in a lot of pain and discomfort. I did learn that covering up seemed to help, but I had no idea what was wrong.”
Over time, Sonal started to realise her symptoms seemed to worsen in step with brighter weather, noticing what she described as a ‘correlation with sunny days’.
Even so, she said she struggled to get her head around what was happening, explaining that she ‘just couldn’t understand even the mere the possibility of being allergic to daylight’, especially because it is ‘the source of all life’.
Then, at 18, she was given an answer: Chronic Actinic Dermatitis — sometimes described as an allergy to daylight.
Talking about the reality of living with it, she said: “Whilst I might look ‘normal’, so to speak, it’s not the case, I don’t have a normal life.
“I have to apply suncream as automatically as we would pick up our keys or put on our shoes before we leave the house.”
And it isn’t limited to bright, sunny conditions. Sonal said that even when the sky is overcast, she can still react if she spends ‘about a minute’ outside.
She also described the period after receiving her diagnosis as especially challenging, as she tried to adjust to the restrictions and the constant management her skin required.
“With that diagnosis I thought what am I going to do with my life, is my life over,” she said.
“Even after it was it diagnosed and I learned to adjust to it, the pain and the discomfort, days of suffering, feeling so uncomfortable in my own skin.”
She added: “It was literally a very dark period of my life. I’ve just really had to obsessively manage my own skin ever since.”