Watch the model who exposed her leg for the first time in ten years
[rumble video_id=veu2d domain_id=u7nb2]
An aspiring model has exposed her leg for the first time in ten years and the reason is shocking.
Meagan Barnard, from Minneapolis in the USA, suffered from a rare condition that made her leg ballooning in size.
After her school friends started calling her the Michelin Man and mocked her, she felt suicidal.
She banned her family and friends from talking about her rare condition and started hiding her leg all the time.
She stopped wearing a dress or a skirt and didn’t expose her leg for nearly 10 years.
The 24-year-old even hid this from her 27-year-old boyfriend, Robert Neidenfeuhr.
According to Barcroft, Meagan said: “If Rob and I were sitting next to each other watching a movie there would be a big, thick blanket between us so he couldn’t feel how hard my leg was.”
“We had been together for two years when I went public and he had no idea.”
Her boyfriend didn’t notice it until she made it public.
Robert added: “She was extremely careful but I really didn’t notice, there were lots of closed doors, lots of lights off – that kind of thing.”
After suffering in silence for 10 years, she decided to go public about the rare condition. Meagan said: “I really don’t know how I’ve hidden this for so long. I guess I don’t want other young girls to have to go through what I did.”
“At the time I would rather have not been alive than have lymphedema. After opening up, it’s just taken this weight off my shoulders and I feel so much happier.”
“I was extremely depressed I would come home from school every day, cry and ask why me – it felt like my life was over at 15.”
“At my lowest point I had written a suicide letter to my dad – I told him I was done and I was just going to end it.”
It all started in her puberty when her lymph nodes did not grow large enough to process fluid and remained trapped in her leg, resulting in extreme swelling in her right leg with up to three liters of excess fluid.
“I woke up one morning and my foot was slightly swollen. It wasn’t painful at the time and I didn’t think anything of it.”
“I saw multiple doctors who said it may have happened during puberty because my lymph nodes didn’t grow or that I could have injured it in some other way – they had no idea what caused it.”
“When I was finally told that I had incurable lymphedema it felt like my life had ended – that’s exactly how I took the news.”
“All my joints ache constantly and normal day to day activities like walking and going to work is extremely painful.”
“I’m starting to come to terms with the condition but for ten years I felt like I belonged in a circus.”
“Along with the pants I have to use a manual compression pump whenever I can to get rid of the swelling.”
“I really enjoyed modeling for the pictures and would love to do more of that in the future.”
“But without the surgery, I feel like many opportunities are not available to me – I just want a chance to live a normal life with normal opportunities”, she said.