![]() ![]() You are first drawn to her pretty brown eyes and high cheekbones. I can’t sunbathe – it makes the scarring worse’). ![]() Katie looks elegant in a black sleeveless jumpsuit, apparently tanned (‘That’s out of a bottle. Katie with Nancy, one of the children she was teaching in Zanzibar The surgeon even added a hole in the lobe, so I can wear an earring again.’ ‘Then they diverted a blood vessel in my head and took skin from my legs. First they made the new ear canal from rib cartilage,’ she says, pulling back her long dark hair so I can see the new, perfect version. When we meet, in a restaurant near her North London home, she tells me happily that doctors have just given her a new one. One of the first surgeries involved removing Katie’s damaged right ear. She’d been preparing excitedly to start studying at Nottingham University but, instead, life became a constant round of surgeries – she’s undergone more than 50 operations to date, not to mention many minor procedures. From a carefree teenager, she became a depressed young woman with more than 30 per cent of her body covered in burns. ‘I was in agony, burning everywhere as though I’d been stung by wasps – but 100 times worse – all over my body.’ From that moment, her life was transformed. ‘At first I thought it was boiling coffee but the bitter smell was so strong I realised it was acid,’ Katie says. The passenger smirked, pulled out a jerry can, doused them in battery acid then drove off. On the last evening of their month’s work, the friends were walking to a restaurant in the island’s ancient capital Stone Town when two men pulled up beside them on a moped. In August 2013, she and her best friend Kirstie Trup, both 18 and waiting for their A-level results, volunteered to teach underprivileged children in the apparently idyllic Tanzanian island of Zanzibar. It sounds an unlikely incident to spark such fear but not when you know the story of Katie’s past five years. ‘Of course, she just walked past me, but for a moment all this panic was triggered and memories came flooding back.’ I was shaking, thinking, “Why are you holding a strange cup? Why are you walking towards me? What are you going to do?”’ Katie recalls. ‘The gym provides paper cones for water, so when I saw the plastic cup, immediately my heart started beating faster. Working out in her local gym recently, Katie Gee spotted a woman walking in her direction, holding a plastic cup. Katie Gee has had more than 50 operations to get to the stage she is at today ![]()
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