Khaliah Shaw: Skin Melted From Face After Flu-Like Drug Reaction
Khaliah Shaw, 36, from Georgia, says her skin blistered and melted away after what she took for flu was Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a rare drug reaction. She spent 37 days in a coma, and says a second reaction followed antibiotics prescribed in July 2025.
Khaliah Shaw, 36, from Georgia in the United States, says her skin melted off her face and body in 2014 after what she first took for flu turned out to be Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS), a rare and severe drug reaction. She says it returned in 2025.
SJS is a disorder in which common medicines trigger the immune system to attack the skin and mucous membranes. Shaw, a former health educator, survived. She says she spent years relearning how to walk, eat and swallow.
Her ordeal began when she was working two jobs while studying for a master's degree. Exhausted, she checked into a psychiatric clinic, where she was prescribed lamotrigine, an epilepsy drug also used to treat bipolar disorder.
She was later found never to have had bipolar disorder, she says, so the drug should not have been prescribed.
From fever to coma
About two weeks after starting the drug, Shaw's body began shutting down. Her temperature rose to 40 degrees, and she assumed it was flu.
A painful rash followed, then blisters. Blisters from SJS appear on the skin and on mucous membranes, including the lips, mouth, throat, urethra and eyes. They burst and leave weeping sores, which can lead to ulceration and heat loss, and the condition needs immediate hospital treatment.
Shaw says her skin "melted off" and that she remembers seeing it sliding off her eyes and lips when she woke in the night. Doctors put her in a medically induced coma for 37 days. She woke with severe burns over 95 percent of her skin.
"I woke up to a body I didn't recognise," she says.
She says she was left legally blind, with neurological and heart damage. Scarring inside her throat makes her choke on food. She also reports post-traumatic stress disorder. She took the doctor and the facility that treated her to court.
A second reaction
Shaw was told that people who have had an SJS reaction are more likely to have another, and she was warned to avoid medicines similar to lamotrigine. The NHS says SJS can be triggered by epilepsy drugs, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory painkillers.
In July 2025, she went to her dentist with what she describes as agonizing tooth pain. The dentist prescribed amoxicillin, an antibiotic, for an infection.
"After two days, my face began to swell up," she says. "And my body was burning from the inside out. It felt like a curling iron was singeing my organs."
SJS often begins with flu-like symptoms, followed by a painful red-purple rash that spreads and blisters. It affects up to six people per million in the US, and its prevalence in the UK is unknown. The cause is often unclear, but it can follow medication or an infection such as pneumonia. Risk is higher for people with a weakened immune system or a personal or family history of the disorder.
"My whole world got turned upside down for no reason at all," Shaw says.
