Steroids made no difference initially.
“So they stopped them, [saying] ‘There’s no point’ and then it just got worse and worse until there was one night it got so bad I pretty much lost my vision.
“I said, ‘Please, can you just try some steroids again?’, and that definitely helped in the end.”
After 30 days in hospital, she was discharged in November and has made a good recovery, despite a few setbacks.
“I still get blisters pop up in my eyes and the rash flares up, always in the same place where the worst burn was.”
In the five years to the end of December, Medsafe received 710 reports of adverse reactions from lamotrigine, including six deaths.
The Government’s drug safety agency said about one in 1000 adults, treated with lamotrigine, would develop a serious rash which could – in very rare cases – progress to Stevens-Johnson syndrome.