A nurse’s seemingly only sore throat transformed her body into a rare ‘leopard print’ pattern. Read more about her skin condition.
Nurse Ashling Armstrong initially thought she had a mild sore throat and acne, but when she noticed tiny red spots spreading across her chest, arms, legs, back, and torso, she knew her skin was experiencing something different.
After receiving a prognosis from physicians, Ashling spiraled into an emotional abyss.
The nurse’s diagnosis from the doctors’ was Guttate Psoriasis, a skin disease common in children and young adults, which often erupts after an infection like strep throat.
It isn’t a chronic condition and usually goes away on its own after a few weeks. Expectedly, the diagnosis got Ashling down, and she was even told the sore throat caused the sudden rash.
Her condition, which was expected to last a few weeks, persisted for almost six months.
It started on my chest in mid-January. It was very mild at this point. When I was younger I used to have really bad acne so I didn’t think anything of it. My mom came up to Belfast the following week and asked to see my back and I hadn’t seen it myself and she said ‘Ashling, your back is completely covered,” she told Kennedy News.
Ashling updated her 400K TikTok followers that her blotches were starting to fade following five sessions of light treatment.
The recovery follows a period of unbearable embarrassment.
