Brittany’s stolen youth - ‘I JUST WANT TO FEEL NORMAL’

If she had the money, this gorgeous girl would have the life-changing surgery

- Fleur Guthrie

Brittany Kremers often wishes she could’ve picked which cancer she got. While the young Christchurch woman saw others battling “hidden” illnesses, she hasn’t been able to conceal hers, and has spent most of her life dealing with stares and rude comments from strangers.

Diagnosed with a devastating facial tumour – stage four alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma – aged eight, Brittany had her jaw and skull base removed, along with the tumour, in a 13hour operation that left her disfigured and unable to see or hear on her right side.

It began a tortuous process of restorative surgeries that lasted years and involved hundreds of hospital admissions. She would tell her parents, Dawn, 57, and Marcel, 55, “I wish I had got leukemia instead, so I wouldn’t have a constant external reminder every time I looked in the mirror.”

Explains Brittany, who turns 26 next month, “My best friend had cancer in his bladder and the only thing that affects him now is he needs to use the bathroom quite often. Whereas, I can’t breathe normally, I can’t eat normally. I’m stuck sounding different and have a crooked smile because of my nerves that have been buggered over the years. I’m stuck with an eyelid that doesn’t close and makes my eye so irritable. I’m stuck looking this way and it gets me really down.