Khaliah Shaw was once a very outgoing student. Always seen smiling and out and about doing things and enjoying life.
She is now mostly indoors with sunglasses on. All due to a severe allergic reaction to a common drug.
The 24-year-old grad student lost 85-90 percent of her skin after she suffered from a rare disorder, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, that can occur after an allergic reaction to medication.
She was on anti-seizure medication Lamotrigine as part of a drug cocktail she was taking to combat bipolar disorder.
Initially after taking the prescribed medication, Shaw began experiencing symptoms, including a sore throat, dryness of the skin, etc. So doctors diagnosed the flu. But that gave way to blisters that covered her whole body, from her eyes right down to the soles of her feet. She lost all her hair and her fingernails, and doctors at Grady Memorial Hospital’s burn unit in Atlanta put her into a coma for five weeks.
When she came out of the medically induced coma, she could barely see. Her vision was impaired. And when she finally regained her sight, she was shocked by her own, disfigured body.
“It was a shock to see that, especially when I’d went to sleep, all my hair had come off,” she said.
Shaw is slowly re-growing her own skin, and she can now see with sunglasses that help to block the painful light, though she is still a long way away from the active young student she once was.
Although she would like to resume her studies in public health at Georgia College and State University, she would settle for just one thing: “I would love to have my vision back.”
We continue to wish Khaliah a healthy recovery and look forward to even greater things in the future.
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