14 DAY TRIAL // A 32-year-old woman currently living in the US is suffering from a downright bizarre skin condition whose underlying cause doctors have not yet managed to pin down.
In a nutshell, this woman has teeny tiny nails growing all over her body instead of hair. As shown in the photos in the gallery below, the nails are sticking out of her hair follicles.
The 32-year-old, named Shanyna Isom, says that, much like regular nails, they grow back not long after being cut. She further details that they are quite hard and that touching them is rather painful.
How the woman got sick
It is understood that the 32-year-old woman developed this mysterious skin condition quite a while ago, in 2009. At that time, she was studying law at the University of Memphis in Tennessee, US.
Shanyna Ison says that, one day, she experienced a massive asthma attack and had to be rushed to a local emergency room. Doctors here treated her with steroids and the woman managed to overcome the incident.
The thing is that the very same steroids that saved her caused her to develop an extreme allergic reaction. Thus, her skin started itching, and despite being treated with allergy drugs, she failed to get any better.
On the contrary, the 32-year-old's mother recollects that her condition went from bad to worse and that, eventually, some really weird things started growing on her skin. They got longer and longer as the days went by and even injured her skin.
“It looked as if she has been in a house fire and gotten burned. We could not figure out what was going on. She was just breaking out everywhere. Her body was scabbed all over,” the mother, named Kathy Gary, said in a statement.
“It was uncontrollable and we didn’t know what it was. Black scabs were coming out of her skin. The nails would grow so long and come out and regrow themselves,” the woman added, as cited by Oddity Central.
Doctors are puzzled by her condition
At first, the woman asked for help from her doctor in Memphis. When he failed to treat her, she decided to contact specialists at the John Hopkins medical center in Maryland. She first met with them in 2011, and after being subjected to several tests, she learned that she had nails growing from her hair follicles.
As mentioned, the doctors handling her case have not yet managed to figure out how and why the woman's hair follicles started producing teeny tiny nails instead of, well, hair. They suspect that either a vitamin deficiency or drop in the amount of oxygen reaching her skin might be to blame.
The somewhat good news is that, although they are utterly clueless about the underlying cause of this mysterious condition, specialists at the John Hopkins medical center have managed to help her get rid of some of the nails growing on her body.
Thus, they have until now managed to remove the nails growing from the hair follicles on Shanyna Isom's head. Besides, now that she is undergoing treatment for her condition, the woman no longer has black scabs all over her legs.
As explained by the 32-year-old's mother, “Her legs aren’t covered in black scabs. They are looking better, and her face just looks like she has a real bad sunburn.”
Since doctors are far from finding a cure for her illness, Shanyna Isom must travel to the John Hopkins medical center in Baltimore, Maryland, once every month or so to have doctors assess her condition and be prescribed drugs.
Living with this mysterious illness
Needless to say, this ordeal has put quite a strain on the woman and her family. The 32-year-old says that she has unpaid medical bills that amount to a whopping $1 million (€0.8 million) and that she and her family are struggling with serious financial difficulties.
Not too long ago, the woman decided to create an organization meant to help people suffering from all sorts of bizarre medical conditions. The organization, dubbed the S.A.I. Foundation, makes it possible for folks who want to help to donate money to those in need.
Despite the fact that specialists have not yet found a cure for her condition, the 32-year-old woman is optimistic about the future, and so is her family. “We know that God is a healer and he’s going to bring her through,” her grandmother said in a recent interview.
