SALT LAKE CITY (KTVX) A Utah woman is sharing her story after she survived an incredibly rare and often fatal skin disorder caused by an allergic reaction to antibiotics.

“I’m lucky to be alive, I’m grateful to be here,” Brandy Nicole Pond, who goes by Nicole, told local affiliate KTVX.

What happened to her was uncommon, but Nicole is bringing awareness to these disorders because, as she said, “this could happen to anybody overnight.”

Nicole said all of this started with a UTI medication. She had a UTI for about two weeks, and nothing was helping, so she asked her doctor if there was something else that she could take. The doctor prescribed her an antibiotic, and she took it for a full 10-day course, not knowing yet that she was allergic to it. The reaction started when she stopped taking it.

She was in Florida at the time, and there was a brush fire nearby, so she wrote the symptoms off at first.

“What I thought was just allergies and just smoke, and allergies from that smoke, ended up being hives, and it turned into rashes, and it turned into blisters, and then it turned into this,” she said, gesturing to her neck and chest. “All within 72 hours of being off of that medication.”

As symptoms developed, she thought it was pink eye, then maybe foot-and-mouth disease, or contact dermatitis. She stayed in her hotel room and tried a variety of remedies, like Benadryl, showering, and using steam masks. Nothing was helping her pain, so Nicole went to urgent care the next day.

“By the time I got to urgent care, I had a fever of 104.8 [degrees], so that’s when I started to realize, okay, something’s wrong. Something’s going on, it’s not just allergies, it’s not just me being sick,” she described.

Nicole said that the doctor came in and took a look at her, and within 10 minutes, she was in the ambulance on the way to the emergency room in Miami. That’s where she was diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS).

According to the Mayo Clinic, SJS is a rare disorder of the skin and mucous membranes, usually caused by a reaction to medication. It starts with flu-like symptoms, followed by rashes and blisters. It usually requires hospitalization.

“It’s when your body is kind of attacking itself. So as you can see here, I’ve got lesions on my body,” Nicole said while gesturing to her skin. “It’s the body overproducing the cellular mucosal lining in your body, and it’s also like being burned from the inside out.”

She said that once it starts, it doesn’t stop, and at that point, the only thing doctors can do is treat the symptoms.

“The condition is considered SJS when the rashes and blisters affect less than 30% of the body. But, as it continues to progress, the diagnosis can become Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis Syndrome (TEN), which involves “extensive damage to the mucous membranes,” according to the Mayo Clinic. Nicole was ultimately diagnosed with TEN.

Nicole said that her body continued to produce lesions and blisters for almost two weeks while she was in the hospital. It was nearly fatal, and Nicole had to be put on a ventilator.

What caused Nicole’s allergic reaction is Bactrim, an antibiotic, and the specific compound that caused the reaction is not just in antibiotics. It can also be found in anti-seizure medications and anti-depressants, Nicole explained.

“I had been pretty healthy. So, to find out that I got this, I thought, well, I’m so healthy, I don’t know, kind of, where this came from. It made me realize like, this could happen to anybody overnight, even if you’re healthy.”

Nicole said that this experience has made her much more aware of people with chronic conditions and autoimmune diseases. She’s having to adjust her lifestyle, and she can’t work while she’s healing.

She said she was an esthetician and massage therapist. “I had a little bit of survivor’s guilt, because I was thinking, well, who’s going to help my clients? Who’s going to take care of them now that I am out? I need to adjust to this.”

Because her condition is so rare, she said there’s not a lot of guidance or plans to help now that the immediate emergency has passed. She said she’s trying to prioritize rest.

“There’s lots of other people who go through something tough like this, so to survivors out there with what somebody called these lucky spots, you’re not alone in this,” she said.

“You can’t really predict what people are thinking, but you can share your side of the story. It deserves to be shared, and it deserves to be heard,” she concluded. “There’s a lot more love and support out there than you think.”

She also recommended that everyone look into their own medication history and look into any antibiotics before taking them.

Nicole has a GoFundMe campaign raising money to help with her recovery.