Making Mealtime Meaningful: Discover how we're giving back with the 12T Cares program →

There is nothing quite like spending a day in the sun, enjoying time with friends, and perhaps even having a drink or two. What could possibly go wrong on such a perfect day? Perhaps you should ask Meegan Clancy.

It seems that she was enjoying some time with her friends in Australia but after somebody spilled a cocktail on her foot, she was left with a rather uncomfortable reminder of it.

Photo: stocksnap.io

That evening, her feet became painful and had burns all over them in something that she described as being “dramatically ugly,” although she did admit that she didn’t have pretty feet to start with.

The Mirror reported that the 44-year-old had been spending time with friends and doing some drinking when somebody spilled a cocktail made of vodka, soda, and lime on her barefoot. She simply wiped it off with a towel and didn’t think much about it until later that night, when her feet began to feel hot and sore.

Photo: SNAPPYGOAT

When she turned on the light, she found that her leg was swollen up to the knee and felt like it was on fire. She even had to keep her foot in a box at night to stop anything from touching it and making it even more painful.

When she went into work the next day, her boss suggested that she go to the hospital to check her foot. After all, she had gone to work without shoes on. It took six hours of examination by medics before they diagnosed her with contact dermatitis.

Contact dermatitis is a reaction that typically occurs as a result of an allergy. It can result in an itchy rash, but they weren’t sure why she had the reaction. They thought maybe she got it when she was swimming over the weekend, but that is when things took a turn for the worse and her skin started to blister.

Photo: flickr/Care_SMC

She said that her skin looked like an acid burn, but she also said that her calves were the size of her thighs. It was a real mystery, but Clancy’s property manager was the one that unraveled it. After uploading pictures to social media, someone said that she had a “Margarita burn.”

That type of skin condition, called phytophotodermatitis, happens when something gets on the skin that makes it UV sensitive. It turns out it was the lime juice in the cocktail that was spilled on her foot that caused the unusual burn, in connection with exposure to sunlight.

Photo: PXFUEL

Clancy is getting better but the pain was still fairly severe for a number of weeks and it caused her to have difficulties walking. It also was a cosmetic issue, due to discoloration that lasted for months according to The Metro.

I’m sure that there is a lesson in here for all of us, especially if you enjoyed day drinking some type of cocktail with lemon or lime while on a boat.

Subscribe to 12 Tomatoes