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So ER was busy as usual with influx of poor veterans trying to get free food and warm bed. Wearing my scrub, I was working so well that doctors mistook me for a nurse. When I was doing some EKGs there was an uproar and this one skinny black man was brought on a stretcher. Everybody moved away from him for his skin was covered with all the nasty blisters and stuff. He was immediately isolated in a negative pressure room and then nurses went in to feed him for he was a vegetable. I asked one doctor about it and she told me she couldn't understand why they were isolating him because the disease was not contagious.
Bullous pemphigoid (BP) is a chronic blistering of the skin. It ranges from mildly itchy welts to severe blisters and infection, and may affect a small area of the body or be widespread. The vast majority of those affected are elderly, but it has been seen at all ages.
It is an autoimmune disorder, meaning it is caused when the body's immune system malfunctions. The immune system is meant to defend the body against bacteria, viruses, and disease, but instead produces antibodies against healthy tissue, cells and organs. Some patients with BP have other autoimmune diseases such diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. Various other factors have been reported to play a role in triggering BP. These include drugs (furosemide, penicillin's), mechanical trauma, and physical traumas (burns from radiation, sun or heat).
Bullous is the medical term for a large blister (a thin-walled sac filled with clear fluid). Usually the skin in BP is very itchy and large, red welts and hives may appear before or during the formation of blisters. The blisters are widespread and usually appear on the areas of the body that flex or move (flexural areas). About 15-20 percent of people with BP also develop blisters in the mouth or down the throat in the esophagus.
