Stevens Johnson Syndrome Stories That Tear the Heart

Hollister, MOHer name is Rosemary and there she is on YouTube, appealing to anyone who will listen to pray for the nephew of her friend Norma. The young man, who is 25, was stricken with Stevens Johnson Syndrome (SJS), a rare condition usually triggered by an allergic reaction to medication. In this case, it appears to be SJS ibuprofen.

Rosemary looks into the camera. It's early morning and she says she must look a fright, but she doesn't care. What matters are the fate and the future of the young man who recently went into the hospital for gastric bypass surgery. The surgery, Rosemary says, went well. But then the young man started to feel sick and thought he had contracted a virus.

He took ibuprofen in an effort to feel better. Was it Advil ibuprofen, a popular over-the-counter medication? We don't know. But whatever brand it was, it triggered SJS in the young fellow.

"He's now in a burn unit at General Hospital. It's very serious," Rosemary says, looking very concerned. "He has big blisters all over his body. Please pray for him.

"[Norma] is very concerned right now and she needs our prayers."

That was back in September. We don't know the outcome of the situation, beyond hoping the prayers of many were answered.

We DO know what happened with Kaitlyn Fletcher, a 14-year-old Missouri teen who wound up in the burn unit of a local hospital with Stevens Johnson Syndrome. According to the October 25 issue of the Springfield News-Leader, her parents still don't know what triggered their daughter's SJS. "The only thing she took was Pepto-Bismol," her mother Laurie told the News-Leader. "I don't think we'll ever pinpoint what triggered it."

Had Kaitlyn taken ibuprofen in the past? The latter is a common medication in the cabinets of thousands of families. Norma knows that it was ibuprofen that triggered her nephew's SJS.

Kaitlyn, meanwhile, isn't out of the woods yet. Back home now, she still suffers headaches and her fingernails are breaking off—one of the after effects of Stevens Johnson Syndrome. And financially, the Fletcher family may be feeling the after effects of their daughter's SJS for a very long time. A 16-day stay in the hospital saddled her parents with $350,000 in medical bills.

Stevens Johnson Syndrome may be rare, but we've known about it for some time. SJS was first discovered in 1922 by pediatricians A.M. Stevens and F.C. Johnson. Almost any medication can trigger an allergic reaction that leads to Stevens Johnson Syndrome, including SJS ibuprofen.