Susannah Braybrook spent years undergoing painful reconstructive surgery after being struck by a rare, facially disfiguring disease. She tells Women's Editor Lindsay Jennings how she finally found happiness.

THE blonde-haired toddler thrusts her hands into her blue dungaree pockets and hops onto one foot, unable to keep still. Her little face beams at the camera as she proudly sports a pair of bright pink, furry deelie-boppers and a Paddington Bear t-shirt. Cherubic blonde curls frame her pretty smiling features.

Susannah Braybrook picks up the photograph of herself and points out the deelie-boppers to her mum, Pauline. The pair burst out laughing and Susannah grabs another picture. This time she's pictured aged two, trying to style her hair and almost swamped by her mum's huge hairdryer.

"She's always been determined," says Pauline smiling fondly at her daughter, "but then she's had to be. She's had so many highs and so many lows and all those years of pain throughout her life. People have said many cruel things. But she's come through it, and I'm very proud of her."

Susannah was about three years old when the rare disease which would go on to dominate her life first left its mark - a small, brownish blemish on her left cheek. Doctors initially put the mark down to a change in pigmentation, but it was when she was about ten years old that Pauline began to notice other worrying symptoms. Susannah's hair was getting thinner on the crown of her head and over the coming months, she saw that her daughter's left eye was being pulled down, as if by some invisible force.

Her symptoms left doctors baffled and it was only when the youngster went to see a plastic surgeon at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) that she was diagnosed with lipodystrophy - an abnormal redistribution of body fat. The disease, she was told, was causing the fat cells in her face to disappear. In Susannah's case, it was known as hemi-facial dystrophy - fat loss from the face.

"I felt so frightened and confused," recalls Susannah, now 25. "There was no information on it, nothing on the Internet. They said there was nothing I could do, there was no cure and no reason why I had it."

On the brink of adolescence, Susannah was told she would need several operations to rebuild her face. The first of these came at the age of 13 at the RVI. Surgeons removed the fat from her back and implanted it in her cheek in an eight-hour operation. It was an agonising procedure, made worse by the wound on her back taking weeks to heal. But the determined teenager never complained. Instead she got on with her schoolwork and went on to endure four further operations.

The second was aged 15, where surgeons removed a piece of bone from her skull and rebuilt her eye socket. Just a year later she had implants in her face, followed, at the age of 17, by an operation to remove some loose skin. Her last operation was to remove an implant which had dislodged when she was 21.

But in addition to the distress and pain of the operations, there was also the psychological impact of the disease. Susannah suffered at the hands of bullies who tormented her at school over her looks. Not surprisingly, her confidence plummeted and she felt so ugly she could barely hold her head up.

"It was just name-calling mainly, they used to say nasty things," she says quietly. "But it did all get on top of me."

Despite her disrupted school life, Susannah managed to secure three GCSEs in maths, English and science and went on to take a GNVQ in leisure and tourism. She even indulged her love of travel and went to stay with her godmother in Brisbane, Australia, for eight weeks. Over there, she says, she felt liberated as few people stared at her face or whispered behind their hands.

"No-one seemed to care about my face over there," she says. "I felt really happy and relaxed. But it unsettled me when I came back because I thought how different people were over here. I felt angry because people were less accepting."

Susannah continued to endure the pain of her operations and secured a job as an administrative assistant for the Benefits Agency in Newcastle. But while her friends were settling down with boyfriends and thinking about planning families, she was doing a job she hated and was rarely going out.

For her mum, a warm, irrepressible woman who has supported her daughter through her darkest days, it was a worrying time. She had watched Susannah cope with the disease with dignity and a quiet, fighting spirit which belied her years. But now it was as if her daughter was giving up on life.

"She was so unhappy," says Pauline. "She would just come in from work, eat her tea and go up to bed. Depressed was an understatement. She felt ugly and that she had nothing in her life to look forward to."

It was an advertisement for the job of a passenger services agent for Servisair at Newcastle Airport which turned Susannah's life around. She started on a temporary contract in March 2003 and was soon taken on permanently, dealing with customer service and helping board flights. Sitting in Servisair's staffroom at the airport and dressed immaculately in the company's pale blue suit, she smiles as her boisterous colleagues dash in and out to get to their lockers.

"I love it here," she says warmly. "Every day is different and everyone has been so supportive. It's given me confidence and new friends and I've got a good social life. I don't care what people think any more."

She points to her mum when asked where she has found the strength to cope with what life has thrown at her.

Says Pauline: "She's blossomed since she came here. I know she's happy now. She used to walk around before with her head down, and now she holds her head up high. There are a lot of people who support her and she's coping with life better."

Susannah's also busy having fun. She loves karaoke and is planning a night out with her friends in fancy dress around Newcastle's Quayside. She chats animatedly about some of the outfits she may wear before moving on to another night out she has planned to a Chinese restaurant.

For the first time she can look forward to her future, with her friends and family behind her. Asked if there are any boyfriends on the horizon she smiles, and says no, not yet. "But I'm happy as I am at the moment," she adds.