Is it normal for a mild sunburn to make you feel kind of feverish?

In My Humble Opinion
1

We spent yesterday having a lovely island adventure with friends from out of town, and though we wore sensible clothing and applied *some *sunscreen, both mremilyforce and I somehow let our faces go a bit pink. This evening, we are both feeling like we’re coming down with something. However, we recognize that many symptoms of “coming down with something” might just be the normal aftereffects of crisping our noses. It’s been a long time since I had any kind of sunburn, so I don’t remember.

Symptoms include (but are not necessarily limited to) itchy eyes, feeling feverish and a little lightheaded/marshmallowheaded, being off our feed, some achiness.

Any bets on whether we come down with colds, or instead just peel?

2

If the temp was pretty high, it might be a mild form of sunstroke.

I am a pasty girl of Irish descent, so I keep shaded most of the time, but when I’m in the heat for a while, I feel exactly as you described.

ETA: Take some fever reducers (Tylenol) and drink lots of fluids!

3

I have really pale skin and have avoided sunburn since my teens but when I played cricket I often used to end up feeling like you describe after a day out in the sun. This despite wearing a hat, long sleeved shirt with collar turned up, long pants and sunscreen on my hands, face and neck.

I think it was more to do with dehydration than the sun. If I drank lots during the day it didn’t seem to happen but once I got to the point of feeling like that it was hard to shake even with fluid replacement.

4

Perfectly common response to mild sunburn.

I advise my patients with similar symptoms to take tylenol or ibuprofen, push fluids, and minimize further sun exposure.

5

Yup. I always feel feverish after sunburn, as does everyone else I’ve ever been sunburned with.

6

Next time, make sure you wear hats.

7

We did. However, it was breezy and we were on boats or at water’s edge a lot of the time. :stuck_out_tongue: (I *said *in the OP we dressed sensibly, silly assuming person.)

8

Nope, not for a boat. All that water down there, sparkling away in the sun? You can get a sunburn off that, too. A hat will help with the sun up in the sky, but you’ve got to wear more sunscreen than normal to protect yourself from the reflected rays off the water, not to mention the nice white deck of the boat itself.

9

So… you “dress” in sunscreen? We tend to “apply” it and tend not to think of it as “clothing”.

And yes, we didn’t apply enough – or rather we didn’t re-apply enough later in the day, I think. We did pretty thorough coats initially.

Seriously, guys, we did take precautions, we know how sunburns happen, and we just got a little pink across the nose and cheekbones. I didn’t really need lectures on sun safety.