For any young girl, her teenage years can often be the hardest time in her life as well as the most memorable and fun.
For 16-year old Nana, who recently found herself growing thick facial and body hair after undergoing a life-saving drug treatment, they’re becoming years she’d rather now spend alone, hiding in her room.
Staring blankly before a camera, the Chinese girl, whose only first name has been given, shows off what has grown into a heavy beard and moustache as the unexpected product of a rare condition called hirsuitism.
‘The doctor said that…it was very serious and without treatment [Nana] would die,’ her mother told China’s Zinhua news agency according to the Huffington Post.
Diagnosed with aplastic anemia in 2010, Nana’s bone marrow wasn’t producing a sufficient amount of new blood cells, causing her hospitalization.
Undergoing a major drug regiment, her health improved, but it was then her physical changes began taking place.
‘After taking these drugs … the girl’s face has grown a thick black beard, and her arms and legs are covered with body hair,’ according to Liao Shen Evening News.
There are few treatment options for hirsutism according to the University of Maryland Medical Center and the Mayo Clinic.
One of them is psychological with it easily found a frustrating and embarrassing condition to live with.
Others can include various hair removal treatments, medications, and lifestyle and, or dietary changes.
According to the University of Maryland, an estimated eight per cent of women in the U.S. have hirsutism.
Roughly half of women with the condition are found with high levels of male sex hormones called androgens, risk factors being genetics as well as race and ethnicity.
‘Every day she cries, wanting to go to school,’ Nana’s concerned but next-to helpless mother said of her daughter who dropped out of school in 2010 because of her condition.
She described Nana as once being ‘lively’ but since her condition, gradually more and more reclusive, wearing a paper mask over her face when out in public along with long-sleeved shirts.
‘Once a lively young girl, there are days when Nana will not speak a word…and more and more, she spends her hours hidden in her room reading books by herself,’ Zinhua reports.
By NINA GOLGOWSKI, From dailymail.co.uk
