Aimee Broberg
A teenager has shed her skin like a moulting snake after two years of using sunbeds twice every day.
Tanning addict Aimee Broberg, 19, spent three weeks in hospital after her whole body suddenly erupted in a painful rash which made her skin bubble and peel off. Now she faces taking a chemotherapy drug meant for cancer patients for the rest of her life - and doctors have told her she can never sunbathe again.
Aimee said: "People ask me if I have been burnt in a house fire. I feel like a human snake. The skin on my body and my scalp feels permanently itchy and on fire. It then flakes and leaves trails of skin where I've been sitting."
Aimee began using sunbeds occasionally when she was just 15. But after she left school and got a job as a sales assistant, she began using them twice a day. "I would go on one for around nine minutes in my lunch hour and again after work," she said. "I had to use different salons because no one would allow me to go on a sunbed twice in one day. I was just addicted."
Aimee even kept her tanning obsession secret from mum Joanne, 42. Joanne said: "I thought her tan was from a bottle. I was horrified when I discovered she was addicted to sunbeds."
Things began to go wrong two years ago when Aimee noticed a finger was peeling. "Next morning I was literally covered in blisters," she said. Aimee went to her GP, who thought it might be psoriasis, a common skin condition.
But it got much worse. One day Joanne found her about to overdose on painkillers, so she took her daughter off to the hospital near their home in Middlesbrough. After three weeks of tests, doctors finally diagnosed PRP - pityriasis rubra pilaris, a very rare chronic skin disease.
The consultant gave her the shocking news. "He told me it was a skin disease that had been triggered by using a sunbed - and I would never be able to tan again," said Aimee. "I now have to cover up in sunlight or my skin just blisters."
Aimee says now: "My skin still sheds - Mum says she knows where I am because I leave a trail of skin! It's better than it was, but it will never be normal. Sunbeds have ruined my life and I feel so stupid."
Prp is a rare skin disease first identified in 1980s. Symptoms include painful red blisters and scaling skin. The palms and soles of sufferers' feet turn orange and they often lose finger- and toe-nails.
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