A teenage girl has been diagnosed with an incurable disease which doctors say will eventually ‘turn her to stone’.
Racheal Steiner-Hooker, 15, has been diagnosed with Mixed Connective Tissue Disease.
The disease has left the teenager from Whakatane on New Zealand’s North Island with poor circulation, lupus, arthritis, and sclerodoma – which is slowly turning her organs to stone.
She suffers from chronic pain and fatigue, and often struggles to get out of bed in the morning.
Racheal has been sick most of her life, and it has taken doctors until now to diagnose her condition.
Racheal Steiner-Hooker, 15, has been diagnosed with Mixed Connective Tissue Disease
She suffers from chronic pain and fatigue, and often struggles to get out of bed in the morning
A Give A Little fundraising page has been set up for the brave teenager, who is described as ‘an inspiring young lady with a heart of gold but with a body that is not keeping up’.
Racheal said she wouldn’t wish her condition on anyone.
‘Sometimes I wish I didn’t always have to explain why I’m not at school or why for someone so young my body feels so old,’ she said.
‘Life isn’t fair, I get it, but each day I choose life, through the good and the bad, taking it step by step.’
Racheal told Stuff other children used to think she was faking her illness as she turned up to school in slings and crutches.
‘It was so hard, I was always bullied,’ she said.
Her mother Ange Hooker (left) quit her job as a nurse to care for her daughter full-time
‘I’m actually kind of happy I know what it is now. I’m a little bit relieved… knowing that it’s not just my mind playing games.’
Racheal missed her last two terms at high school but studied hard enough from home to pass her exams at the end of 2017.
She is on medication to slow down the progression of her illness, but there is no cure and over time her symptoms will continue to get worse.
Racheal missed her last two terms at high school but studied hard enough from home to pass her exams at the end of 2017
Her mother Ange Hooker quit her job as a nurse to care for her daughter full-time.
‘The symptoms she’s got you would expect to see in a 60 or 70-year-old person… she wants to be a normal teenager,’ Ms Hooker said.
The fundraising effort has generated more than $8,000 for Racheal and her family to take their first holiday, a cruise from Auckland to Napier in April.