My invisible illness was so painful I gave myself black eyes just so people would notice

WHEN Lara Bloom got a black eye from a scuffle at school, she was dumbfounded with the pouring of sympathy she received.

The pain was barely noticeable compared to that she experienced every day due to having an invisible illness. 

The then 16-year-old had been crippled by the symptoms of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome for five years.

But she was yet to be diagnosed, silently suffering from the condition’s constant challenges. 

Throughout secondary school, she fractured her wrist dozens of times and was always hobbling around school on crutches or in plaster casts.

But it was the “invisible” physical pain that was the worst, including breathlessness and fatigue, and confusion about what was wrong.

Baffled doctors described her as simply “accident prone”.

Teachers and school kids thought of her as the “class clown”.

So when Lara got more sympathy from a black eye than she had her whole life, the confused teenager was pushed to do “the unthinkable”.

The now 42-year-old, from Bushy, Hertfordshire, told The Sun: “I got a black eye and everyone was saying, ‘Are you okay? Is there anything I can do? This must be terrible for you’.

“I was thinking ‘I can’t even feel it, this is nothing compared to the pain I feel every day’. I was really frustrated. 

“I wanted people to believe and understand me, so I did the unthinkable.  

“I ended up beating myself up because I wanted to recreate a moment where people could finally see the pain I was in.

“As predicted, everyone thought it was terrible. I woke up in an ambulance.