Rare condition leaves woman with almost 6000 tumours

26 Nov, 2016 11:30 PM2 minutes to read

Libby Huffer from Indiana, USA, has a rare condition - Neurofibromatosis - that creates numerous bumps all over her body

Other

A shocking condition has left a woman with nearly 6,000 large tumours covering her entire body.

Libby Huffer, 44, was diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis Type 1, a rare skin disease that causes non-cancerous lumps, when she was five years old.

The mum from Fort Wayne in Indiana, USA, is thought to be one of the few people in the world with the condition.

She lived a happy, normal life until her teenage years when hundreds of bumps began to develop on her skin.

After the first outbreak, she was severely bullied by people who thought she was contagious and labelled the poor woman Lizard-Breath.

The cruel comments were so bad, she changed her name from Elizabeth to Libby to avoid the painful reminder of the bullying.

In 1993, while pregnant with her daughter, Libby's hormones caused her tumours to multiply into the thousands.

Now the mum has more than 5,500 tumours from her forehead to her feet and suffers chronic pain.

Despite ten operations to remove the lumps, surgery has failed and some of the tumours have even grown back.

Libby's last hope is for specialist treatment to obliterate thousands of the tumours in a five hour session.

Recently she braved showing her skin in public in the hope of trying to attract funding for the treatment.

- Caters