'It was hell on earth.'
A woman was horrified to find her skin, hair and nails falling off after a mosquito bit her on holiday.
Amy Wells was on a dream trip to the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean with her now husband Charlie and had just got engaged when she woke up with a rash all over her body.
The 37-year-old was given antibiotics at a hospital on the island, but they reacted with another medicine she was taking and days later, when she was back in the UK, her skin was covered in painful blisters.
Amy ended up in A&E where doctors found puncture wounds suggesting the first rash had been caused by a mosquito bite.
The quality control worker says her skin started peeling off, with some of it sticking to her legs, causing open wounds and scarring.
She also lost her nails and her hair fell out, the latter potentially due to shock.
Amy, from Ashford, Kent, said the experience was ‘hell on earth’.
Warning: One of the photos below is graphic
‘The blisters covered my whole body – even my eyes and my lips. It was extremely painful. People kept asking me if I’d been in a fire.
‘It’s very odd. I’ve never had any kind of allergic reaction to anything.’
Amy and security worker Charlie, 27, travelled to the Dominican Republic on January 22 2023 and got engaged four days later on Amy’s birthday.
After a day swimming with dolphins, Amy woke on January 28 with a rash on her neck, which quickly spread over her whole body.
Amy went to the island’s hospital where she was given an antibiotic called ceftriaxone, not commonly used in the UK, she said.
A language barrier meant they didn’t talk about how she was taking amoxicillin for a tooth infection.
Amy stayed in hospital and was allowed to fly home on February 1 because the infection markers had dropped, but she had little blisters appearing on her body.
Her thighs swelled to twice their normal size during the ten-hour flight, and it felt like they were burning, she said.
She went to an urgent-care centre in Faversham, Kent and was sent on to A&E at the William Harvey hospital in Ashford.
She said: ‘I knew something wasn’t right. It felt like I was burning from the inside out.
‘The blisters started popping while I was in A&E – fluid was pouring out of them. It was horrible.’
Amy said she had to wait 56 hours in A&E before being given a bed in a corridor, then a ward, because the hospital was so full.
Doctors spotted puncture wounds on Amy’s legs which they identified as mosquito bites, she said.
Amy believes she was bitten by tiger mosquitos, which carry dengue fever and Zika virus.
She thinks an infection from the bites caused the first rash.
Medics said the burning was caused by a rare reaction between the two antibiotics, she said.
After the blisters popped, her skin peeled off, but some skin stuck to her legs leaving open wounds which turned green after she was discharged.
‘I was really frightened,’ she said.
Her legs took three weeks to heal, thanks to cream, and she now has scarring covering half of each leg below the knee.
Amy had to take ten weeks off work.
Her finger and toe nails fell out in April, and her hair started thinning, and by May she was totally bald.
A hair specialist explained this was caused by shock.
She said: ‘Losing my hair was the hardest part – your hair really defines you. I looked in the mirror and I was like ‘that’s not me’.”
Amy and Charlie got married on October 14.
‘After everything that had happened we decided not to hang about,’ Amy explained.
‘You never expect that something like this can happen to you. It’s such a rare illness and I was so healthy.’
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