In a shocking incident, a woman from New Zealand claimed that she suffered from a serious side-effect due to lamotrigine – used to treat epilepsy and low mood in people with bipolar disorder.
The 23-year-old woman had been battling a chest infection for several weeks before she woke up with a painful rash on her body. When she went to the hospital, the doctors diagnosed her with Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS). It is a rare but serious condition caused by the body’s overreaction to medicine, particularly epilepsy drugs, antibiotics, and anti-inflammatory painkillers like ibuprofen.
According to the woman, the doctors didn’t know how to treat the condition and without treatment, it could become life-threatening.
“But the scariest part is that it burned me from the inside out – so all the burns on the outside were because my insides were so burned that it started to manifest on the outside of my skin. The rash had started to take over my body. It was like my arm had been cooked. I could also feel the bone of the top of my mouth because my gums had died,” the woman said, as quoted by The Sun.
According to a report by The Sun, the blistering in her digestive tract was so bad that she needed to be hooked up to a feeding tube. She was also given steroids but they didn’t seem to help.
Reportedly, she also lost her vision. Fortunately, after 30 days of treatment, she was discharged but she still experiences some symptoms.
“I still get blisters pop up in my eyes and the rash flares up, always in the same place where the worst burn was,” she said as quoted by The Sun.
According to the doctors, the SJS was triggered by lamotrigine, which she started taking two months earlier.
