Boy Nearly Dies After Taking Painkiller

An 11-year-old boy nearly died and was diagnosed with a rare condition when he took a common painkiller to treat a viral infection.

Calvin Lock experienced an aggressive allergic reaction, leading to severe burns all over his body, when he took Nurofen for children to treat sore throat, last month.

He spent three days on a life-support machine and was later admitted to a specialist burns hospital. He was diagnosed with a rare condition Stevens Johnson Syndrome, that affects between 1.2 and 6 people per million every year. Stevens Johnson Syndrome is a life-threatening skin disease caused by a drug reaction that damages the tissues and blood vessels of the skin.

Lock, six days after taking the medicine, suffered some rashes. Mistaking the rashes for chicken pox, his doctor put him on an antibiotics medication.

However, the rashes spread all over his body. He was rushed to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where doctors again diagnosed the condition as chickenpox.

His condition continued to worsen. Lock was put on life-support machine when he started to display breathing problems, difficulties in seeing, talking or walking.

Doctors and even his parents had very little hope of his survival.

"The doctors are 100 per cent sure that the ibuprofen caused Calvin's reaction. We would never have known that he was going to be allergic. I have given it to my other children and they have been fine," Calvin's mother Robyn Moult, who has three older children, told Daily Mail. "The severity of the allergic reaction was frightening. Literally every part of his body had blistered. Calvin looked like someone had poured petrol over him and set him alight. He kept asking me if he was dying. He said he would see us on the other side. We got him to record goodbye messages to his brothers and sisters."

Surgeons removed about 65 percent of the boy's skin to bring him to normalcy.

Now, Moult and Calvin's stepfather Daryn are in their effort to spread awareness about Stevens Johnson Syndrome.