Life was beautiful for 24-year-old Cassandra Campbell. She was a happy mother of a newborn baby and had just opened a tattoo salon.
Cassandra enjoyed life and looked forward to building her business and watching her child grow.
Cassandra was bitten by a beetle and went to the doctor to have it checked out. She was sent home with a prescription for antibiotics.
After taking the medication, Cassandra developed flu-like symptoms and an itch that quickly spread all over her body.
Cassandra went back to the doctor several times but was sent home each time.
One evening, Cassandra’s condition became so severe that she was rushed to the hospital.
By this time, Cassandra’s skin was covered in painful cracked blisters. Her eyes were swollen shut, and she couldn’t walk.
Since they didn’t know the cause, Cassandra’s ER doctors treated her as a burns patient. It took several days before they could determine the cause of her terrible symptoms.
Cassandra was eventually diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare life-threatening condition that affects the skin in a similar way to a severe allergic reaction.
The most common causes of this disease are medications such as penicillin or Bactrim.
In Cassandra’s case, she had taken antibiotics, but experts are not exactly sure which substance in the medication triggered the disease.
What started as mild symptoms escalated until the disease took Cassandra’s life when her child was only three weeks old.
Now, Cassandra’s family wants to share her story to raise awareness about the disease. If a medication is the cause, the reaction occurs within the first two weeks after ingestion.
The primary treatment for Stevens-Johnson syndrome in this case is to stop using the medication that may have triggered it as soon as possible.
Please share this information with your friends on Facebook. Together, we can spread awareness about this rare, deadly disease. If it saves just one life in the future, it’s worth it.
