A woman who was left ‘burning from the inside out’ and in a 17-day coma from an extreme reaction to Ibuprofen will never get her sight back, doctors have confirmed.
Jaqueline Gmack took the over-the-counter medication to alleviate menstrual cramps, but soon started to experience terrifying symptoms, including blistering skin.
The 32-year-old was taken to hospital and put into an induced coma, with doctors discovering her body’s reaction to the medication had triggered a rare condition called Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS).
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It was a “miracle” she survived the traumatising incident, but despite 26 operations to save her vision, doctors have recently confirmed the vision in her right eye is lost for good, and vision in her left eye is extremely limited.
“It has taken a while for the reality to sink in – I entered a period of real mourning,” Jaqueline, from Papanduva, Brazil, told Need To Know.
“I don’t recognise faces on the street, I can barely see who’s next to me.
“I can’t walk alone because I can’t see steps, holes, or obstacles.”
Jaqueline has been suffering corneal perforation – where the cornea, in the front part of the eye, has a hole or opening – since the incident, and has recently had two corneal transplants to prevent her eye from leaking.
The issue means she can’t regain clear vision, but the first transplant wasn’t fully successful, leading to a second in February which involved having her eyelids sewn shut.
She said: “I was devastated and overwhelmed because I didn’t want my eyelids to be sewn, but I knew it was the only option to save my eye from further corneal damage.”
A few months on, the stitches eventually fell out, but doctors delivered the devastating news that she will no longer be able to see out of her right eye due to the extensive damage caused by SJS.
She is left only able to detect shapes and some light, with the limited vision in her left eye – something Jaqueline has been bravely adapting to over the past weeks.
She said: “Tears came, alongside anger and unanswered questions – why me?
“I got no answers.
“But little by little, I learned to listen to myself.
“I learned that seeing doesn’t depend solely on the eyes – that the heart also sees, and sometimes with more clarity.
“I began to value the sounds, the smells, the textures, the voices that guide me.
“I’ve rediscovered the world with other senses.”
The issues with her vision are a direct result of the horrifying experience she suffered back in 2011.
When she woke up from the 17-day coma, life had changed forever.
Jaqueline said: “It was like I’d been burned from the inside out.
“I didn’t know what had happened to me.
“I noticed my entire body was bandaged, my vision was completely blurred, and I had a tube down my throat, but I wasn’t in any pain.
“Only then did the penny start to drop and I realised that I was very weak, and that something very serious had happened to me.
“They [doctors] told me it was a miracle I’d survived.
“My family didn’t let me see myself in the mirror for a few days.
“When I did finally look in the mirror, I saw someone I didn’t recognise.”
Ever since, she has had more than two dozen operations, including other cornea transplants, amniotic membrane transplants, and stem cell transplants.
Unsurprisingly, Jaqueline has steered clear of Ibuprofen ever since her body’s extreme reaction to it.
She added: “I haven’t taken anything similar to anti-inflammatories ever since.
“When I have menstrual cramps, I use Buscopan, which is what my doctor recommends.”
And while she has been through huge trauma over the past few years as doctors fought to save her vision, Jaqueline is determined to remain positive.
She said: “It still hurts and there are days when fear grips me, when the longing for sight weighs heavily.
“But there are also days of laughter, and of achievements that only I know how much they cost.
“Not because everything is over – but because I didn’t stop.”
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