Beauty Pageant Hopeful Back on Runway After Horrific Bout with SJS

Jackson, MSIt’s not often that a patient can self-diagnose Stevens Johnson Syndrome from a few basic symptoms. But that’s exactly what Kennitra Thompson did after she began to experience facial swelling followed by a Stevens Johnson Syndrome rash.

“I had [searched online for] my medication, and Stevens Johnson Syndrome popped up,” she told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi (7/6/13). “I read the symptoms, and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness. This is it.’ Around that time, I was breaking out in lacerations on my hands and feet.”

The pretty 24-year-old, who has competed in several beauty pageants and has designs on the Miss America title, is back from a horrific battle with SJS that almost cost her her life. At one time, in the hospital, she flatlined and was placed on life support.

At first, Thompson thought she simply had a cold. But when her symptoms escalated, she headed to the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC) for help, where her own self-diagnosis was confirmed. She was admitted this past March, and according to The Clarion-Ledger, her initial Stevens Johnson Syndrome symptoms had morphed into painful blisters that encompassed her entire body within just two days.

“[My doctor] told me I had Stevens Johnson Syndrome, and most people don’t make it. She said it was going to get a lot worse before it got better, but I was a fighter and not going to give up. She told me to pray.”

During the nadir of her illness, doctors placed the young woman in an induced coma for two weeks, in an effort to slow the illness down. She was intubated and moved to intensive care. Doctors had decided to airlift the critically ill Thompson to the burn unit of a Georgia hospital in a last-ditch effort to save her young life, when suddenly Thompson’s Stevens Johnson Syndrome skin disease finally began to ease.

Thompson was released from the hospital in April, and was scheduled to compete last month in the annual Miss Mississippi Pageant. But much healing still remains. At the height of her battle with Stevens Johnson Syndrome skin disease, her family had to cover all the mirrors in her room to spare her the horror of how SJS had ravaged her young body.
While Thompson has recovered sufficiently to compete once again in the pageants that she loves, her body is nonetheless covered in what Thompson and her family regard as “war wounds” or “cheetah spots” - the scars from her battle with Stevens Johnson Syndrome.

CBS 5 (7/11/13) in Mississippi reports that Thompson had been taking Lamotrigine, described in the report as one of the more common triggers of SJS. UMC Dermatologist Dr. Julie Wyatt, who treated Thompson, told CBS 5 in an interview that in the absence of a definitive cause of SJS, her view centers on the potential inability for a patient to break down certain medications in his or her body. The medications then, in Wyatt’s view, build up to levels toxic to the human body.

Many Stevens Johnson Syndrome lawyers advise their clients to litigate against pharmaceuticals suspected of triggering SJS in certain individuals, in view of a lack of information warning consumers about the potential for Stevens Johnson Syndrome.