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Tina Sayavic, 20, was born with neurofibromatosis type 1, a neurological disorder that severely alters a patient’s physical appearance.
Since Sayavic was a child, she’s had tumors growing on her face in such a noticeably disfigured way that people immediately assume she’s contagious with something. It’s hard for her to meet new people, and even for those who do know her, they still sometimes give her wary looks.
“The first contact with people is always difficult because they get scared of what I have,” Sayavic explained. “They think that I am, I don't know, contagious, that they will get the disease, but there are also people who accept me and spend time with me. But most of them still look at me sideways.
“Sometimes it's hard to go into a new environment, or to a group of people who don't know you because you never know how they will accept you, but I try to force myself to forget about that and try to fit in as much as I can.”
Although Sayavic has attempted to improve this process of becoming familiar with other people by having surgery done on her face, the attempts haven’t proved to be very successful.
In the past decade, Sayavic has undergone 12 different operations, all of which aimed to remove tumors from her face and allow her to regain a more “normal” appearance. Her last operation, for example, focused on rebuilding the structure of her nose.
The surgeries aren’t incredibly successful and also give Sayavic quite a deal of stress, but she realizes that her condition would be much worse if she’d chosen not to undergo any at all.
When the stress of the procedures and people’s behavior gets to be too much, Sayavic turns to jogging as a “form of relaxation.”
“When I jog I forget about all worries, jogging relaxes me, it fills me with new energy,” she explained.
It will be a few weeks until Sayavic can jog again, after her surgery, but she continues to be hopeful that these continued procedures will one day bring her the relief she seeks.
