14 DAY TRIAL // A teenager nearly lost her life after developing a severe allergic reaction to a drug she took in order to treat her irritable bowel syndrome.
What's more, the allergic reaction she had to the drug, called Zantac Ranitidine, caused the skin on her body to fall off in chunks, and also left the teenager without hair, nails, eyelashes and eyebrows.
“I looked like a monster from a Halloween movie, Leanne Howes recollects. “I'm lucky to be alive,” she further explains.
According to Daily Mail, it was in 2013 when the trainee hairdresser from Norwich, UK, developed the severe allergic reaction to Zantac Ranitidine that nearly killed her.
Thus, she says that she first started feeling ill in September. It was not long after an itchy rash appeared on her skin that her body ended up being almost entirely covered in blisters.
The teenager details that, as surprising as this may sound, some of these blisters were about the size of tennis balls.
Others covered her throat and her tongue, and made it almost impossible for her to breathe.
The teenager's mother rushed her to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, and doctors here attempted to ease her pain by giving her morphine and applying soothing cream to her face and chest.
“I thought I was going to die. I couldn't move, and my face was so swollen that my eyes had fused shut. Everywhere was itching, and my skin was weeping a thick, yellow pus,” the teenager describes her experience.
“When I came round the next day, my mum told me that doctors had said if I got through the night, it would be a miracle. I was just so happy to be alive,” she adds.
Specialists diagnosed Leanne Howes with a condition known to the scientific community as Stevens-Johnson syndrome, and told her that cases of severe allergic reactions such as the one she developed are as rare as one in a million.
Since Stevens-Johnson syndrome cannot be treated and can only be allowed to run its course, the girl ended up spending four weeks in hospital on a morphine drip.
Leanne Howes eventually started feeling better, and was allowed to go home. However, her skin is still dry and bumpy, and, due to the fact that the conditioned scarred her tear ducts, she must take eye drops twice a day.
Despite feeling better physically, the girl says that the psychological trauma is still there. “I'm absolutely terrified to take any more medication now. I'm so scared it will happen again and I might not be as lucky,” she admits.