Proudly posing in a classy purple prom dress before her end-of-year sixth form ball Lizzy Bull felt “beautiful and confident” as well as a little “fun and flirty” as she shared her hopes and dreams with her friends like any other 18-year-old girl. Unlike her classmates, she is blind and has endured more than 100 operations as a result of a rare and incurable genetic condition causing massive, “droopy” tumours to grow around her body, which have disfigured her face and one of which recently turned cancerous.
Yet there is no holding this remarkable young woman back and, faced with losing her long, glossy hair because of chemotherapy, she has simply enthused about the “bright pink wig” she hopes to have. To ensure she can still have the children she wants if, as she hopes, she falls in love, she had her eggs harvested in case the treatment leaves her infertile.
Lizzy, who lives in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, with her parents Nicola, 40, a full-time mum and Gavin, 44, a car manufacturer, and brothers Matthew, 19, and William, 10 – who she nicknames collectively The Addams Family after the eccentric TV clan “because they are so odd” – said: “I want my own house, my own job, my own family.
