The Girl With Half a Face premieres Wednesday, Dec. 18 at 10pm ET/PT on Discovery Fit & Health.
When Sarah Atwell was a toddler, her new stepdad Kenny noticed that something was different about the little girl’s face — even before Sarah’s own devoted mother, Tara, realized anything was amiss.
Soon enough, Sarah —now 17 — was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, or NF, a genetic disorder that in Sarah’s rare case caused a large, drooping tumor to slowly develop over the right side of her face. She inherited NF from Tara’s side of the family, though no other relatives have shown symptoms of the condition.
By her middle-school years, Sarah had become a favored target of bullies who delighted in harassing her and her mentally challenged brother Troy. Seeking help from the school’s principal and teachers, the girl was told that if she quit tattling on her tormentors, they would eventually stop. They didn’t. Though her loving family and the medical community did what they could (including a series of disappointing surgeries), Sarah’s tumor and the bullying continued to grow.
Discovery Fit & Health’s inspiring new special, The Girl With Half a Face, picks up Sarah’s story as the then 16-year-old comes up with a compelling way to reach out to her adversaries and the world, and meets a pair of surgeons who are willing to try a risky new surgery that could dramatically reduce the size of her tumor.
Moved by fellow Canadian teen Amanda Todd’s heartrending attempt to find support before she committed suicide in 2012, Sarah created a Facebook video in which she explains her condition and her predicament on pieces of paper she holds out to the camera. But Sarah ended her video with a message of strength and hope. By the next morning, she had more than 1,000 messages of support awaiting her.
“I had watched Amanda Todd’s video that she made with the cue cards, and I thought maybe I would try and just see,” Sarah explains, saying that she chose its uplifting close “mostly on purpose to conclude my video and give it a positive ending.”
The video also helped Sarah connect with other people living with NF, including Reggie Bibbs of the Just Ask! Foundation, a neurofibromatosis support and awareness organization. And as Sarah’s media attention grew, she discovered plenty of kids at her school now wanted to befriend her, too. She proceeded with caution.
“I still don’t trust some people,” Sarah admits. “But it’s coming around.”
In preparation for Sarah’s newest surgery, the family decides to load up their RV and leave their jangling nerves at home, save for an adventure in zip-lining.
And then the big day arrives.
Sarah says she had a single goal — a straight smile. “My last surgeries, I thought I would wake up and it would all be normal, but I was disappointed because it was still hanging and still droopy,” she explains.
The Girl With Half a Face does reveal the outcome of the new surgery — but Sarah says that wasn’t her primary goal in doing the special. “I thought that if people see the show, then other kids that are being bullied might stand up for themselves or start telling people that they’re being picked on,” she explains, adding that she hopes viewers of all ages will realize “that they should think before they bully someone, and if they’re having a bad day, not to take it out on someone else or make someone else feel bad.”
That mission is also why she hopes to make a career of working with small children, an activity that has given her solace and joy since she began volunteering with students at her own elementary school.
“All the little kids I’ve worked with know that bullying is bad — don’t bully and help someone who is being bullied,” she says. “So hopefully things are going to be all good with the kids I work with!”
In conjunction with the premiere of The Girl With Half a Face, Discovery Fit & Health has partnered with DoSomething.org and The Wireless Foundation to help stop bullying via The Bully Text campaign, a text-based educational game in which users learn how to respond to bullies in typical situations at an imaginary high school.
The Girl With Half a Face premieres Wednesday, Dec. 18 at 10pm ET/PT on Discovery Fit & Health, and encores Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014, at 10pm ET/PT on TLC.
Images: Andrew Nock/Discovery Fit & Health
I have nf 1 have the tumor all over me. you are much stronger than i am.
wish that eveyone can under stand what its like to walk in your in shoes
ever day..
my prayer are with you.
My wish for you is that you find your strength too.
“big hug, little hug”
I think you are a beautiful person inside and out. Much luck to you in the future . Cheers to you Sarah !!!
hi i think sarah is a beautiful young women.
It seems normal nowadays especially to those teenagers to bully others, To prevent this kind of incident, I have an application now on my smartphone that will help us to be safe always. just press on your panic button, and you can connect you up to your safety network and you can escalate your call directly to 911 because its 24/7 emergency response call center. Wherever you go,they can locate you because it has precise private gps locator. We really need this application for us to be safe always.To know more about this,check this link: http://www.SafeKidZone.com/
When I first saw Sarah on “The Girl With Half a Face”, I thought she looked like a pretty, young cheerleader. She’s amazing, the people bullying her are ridiculous. When she gets older she will realize that.