Charlotte Gilmour, a 23-year-old woman from New Zealand, recently shared her harrowing experience with a medication she took for depression. She described it as “terrifying,” recounting how it felt like it was “burning me from the inside out” and almost cost her life.
Gilmour developed Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS), a rare but severe disorder characterized by painful blisters on the skin, mouth, and esophagus. The condition, fatal in 10% of cases, typically starts with flu-like symptoms before progressing to a spreading rash that blisters, as per the Mayo Clinic.
Doctors attributed Gilmour’s severe reaction, affecting just one in a million people worldwide, to lamotrigine, a drug used for epilepsy and depression.
“I looked in the mirror, and I just burst into tears. I think deep down, I knew it was something serious,” Gilmour recounted emotionally.
Seeking medical help, she went to the hospital where Filipino nurses recognized the rash due to similar cases in the Philippines. Despite this, medical staff seemed uncertain about the treatment.
“It was frightening to hear that nobody really knew much about this,” Gilmour recalled.
Describing the ordeal, she said, “The scariest part was feeling like it was burning me from the inside out. The burns on my skin were a reflection of the damage happening inside my body.”
The blistering in her digestive tract was so severe that she required a feeding tube.
Initially prescribed steroids, Gilmour saw no improvement and even experienced vision loss one night. However, upon her request, she was put back on the medication, which eventually proved beneficial.
After 30 days of treatment, Gilmour was discharged from the hospital in November, relieved to have survived the traumatic experience.
