Two Heartbreaking Tales of Stevens Johnson Syndrome

April 23, 2010, 8:00AM. By Gordon Gibb

Dallas, TXCody Strickland, a 21-year-old electrician and outdoors enthusiast, was no stranger to poison ivy. According to the 4/3/10 edition of the Dallas Morning News, Strickland's most recent—and final—bout with poison ivy was in early February, when he came into contact with it at a bonfire party on the shores of Lake Pat Cleburne in Texas. The local hospital gave him medicine to take care of it. A few days later he developed a serious skin rash and blisters. The onset of Stevens Johnson Syndrome (SJS) was so severe, he was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he later lapsed into a coma.

He was treated for three weeks in the hospital's burn unit. However, doctors were unable to save him. According to Strickland's father, James, his son lost the skin across 95 percent of his body.

Cecilia Garcia was luckier. She was suffering from a cold two years ago when she opted to take Bactrim, a sulfa-based medication that had been prescribed to her husband. Two weeks later, a doctor took note of the red spots spreading across her body and, pronouncing it a drug allergy, prescribed more Bactrim.

After two days, Cecilia's husband came home from work to find his wife unrecognizable. Her face "just blew up," he told the Dallas Morning News.

Garcia was rushed to the same hospital as Strickland, where she was put into an induced coma. Three weeks later she awoke in the burn unit to find that her skin had begun to regenerate.

However, the damage to her eyes is lasting. Her lashes now grow inward from scarred eyelids, scratching her corneas. One eye barely functions and what vision she has is further challenged by an intense sensitivity to light. Cecelia now leaves the house just for treatments. The remainder of the time she sits in a darkened living room, quietly listening to the television with the picture turned off. The light is just too bright.

The Dallas Morning News reports that SJS is rare and poorly understood. Stevens Johnson Syndrome can be triggered by medication—some medications more than others, but all carry the potential. Doctors also suspect that some people might be more predisposed to SJS than others, but so far no one has figured out how to predict who.

"There's no way to avoid it. No way to know who can be at risk," says Bernard Cohen, head of pediatric dermatology at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland, in comments published in the Dallas Morning News.

What's more, without the protection of the top layers of skin, "bad stuff gets in and good stuff gets out," explains Cohen. "Without those areas of the body functioning, you're basically dead meat."

Stevens Johnson Syndrome is reported to be most common in children.