Eva Uhlin, 19, suffered a bizarre allergic reaction to household paracetamol painkiller purchased over the counter that left her unrecognisable when she was only 15 years old.
The potentially fatal condition — Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis — gripped her entire body, causing her skin to burn up and scab over before falling off.
The illness left Uhlin, who currently works as a waitress, lying in a hospital bed for weeks as it ran its devastating course. Forty per cent of people who contract the disease do not survive.
“It felt like something was crawling around under my skin, I was in total shock. It was like something out of a horror film,” Uhlin said.
Now, more than four years later, Uhlin is finally comfortable revealing her face to the world for the first time after completely growing back all her skin.
She was diagnosed with a fever and told to take a couple of paracetamol tablets to relieve her symptoms, but the combination of her virus and the drug created a reaction that nobody could have predicted, “The Daily Mail” reported.
Professor Folke Sjvberg from University Hospital of Linkoping, Sweden, who treated Uhlin, said: “The condition is very uncommon and it strikes only one in a million people. When it is really bad it manifests itself in the way it had done with Eva. At its worst it covers all the skin on the body and can scab over the eyes and mouth”.
