A former paramedic experienced serious side effects five months after starting treatment for bipolar disorder.
Marie-Pier Fillion was diagnosed at the age of 33. His doctor prescribed him a treatment whose serious side effects can occur in one in a million cases.
“We automatically think that’s not going to happen to us,” Marie-Pier Fillion explained in an interview with TVA Nouvelles.
The first symptoms appear five months after the start of treatment.
“I had extremely red eyes, I had very swollen lips, almost bloody,” she added.
She was taken to a Quebec hospital, where doctors confirmed it was drug-induced Stevens-Johnson syndrome.
“I have [été] Third degree burns all over my body, I lost all my skin. “My tear ducts are clogged, I have no more tears, I have no more saliva,” she explained.
The disease also caused him to lose his sight for more than two years, but surgery in Boston, USA allowed him to partially regain use of his right eye.
Surgery and treatment costs are covered by the Régie de l’Assurance Maladie du Québec, but not other costs.
“I’m on my third surgery, which may cost me around $7,000 there,” she confirmed.
Eventually, his friends convinced him to seek help and started a crowdfunding campaign on the website GoFoundme to allow him to continue his treatment in Boston.
“Just to think that she can’t go to Boston and go blind again is unthinkable,” said her friend Geneviève Gauvreau.