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When Vicki Hull was just 11 years old, her legs began to swell at an unnatural rate. Her mom brought her to the doctors, but they simply told her that she needed to lose weight and sent her back home.
Hull’s legs only continued to get worse over time. She returned to the doctors several times, but never received proper help or diagnosis.
It wasn’t until Hull was 22 that she began to really feel the physical and emotional strain of her engorged, heavy legs and tried to commit suicide. That was when her doctors finally gave her legs another, proper look and diagnosed her with lipedema, a medical condition where fat collects and builds unnaturally in the legs and buttocks.
Now 29 years old, Hull is still suffering from her condition.
Her legs give her constant pain and their weight puts immense strain on her hips and knees. She has trouble walking, can no longer fit into the bathtub at her house, and has decided to never have biological children so she can avoid passing down this disease to them.
“I go to bed and I wake up in pain,” Hull says. “It is constant and it is absolutely devastating because it is only going to get worse. I struggle to get around and I hate taking my foster son swimming because people stare at me.”
While massages and compression stockings can help alleviate the symptoms of lipedema, the only way to properly treat it is a particular liposuction procedure.
However, the National Health System doesn’t cover the costs of this procedure because doctors claim it’s purely for cosmetic reasons – despite Hull’s constant pain.
“I get pins and needles, shooting pains, stabbing pains, and because there is so much weight on my legs, it’s affecting my knees, hips, and joints,” Hull explains.
Without treatment, however, Hull’s disease could spread and render her immobile or in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She and her family have set up a fundraising page online, in hopes of raising enough money to allow her to get the treatment and surgery she needs under private care.
