. In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Sophie, from Darwen, Lancashire, says coming so close to death on numerous occasions has completely changed her outlook on life, and insists she wouldn't be here without the NHS service she received. It's one of the reasons she wants to thank the NHS and support The Sun's Who Cares Wins Awards. On-stage horror accident Sophie's accident occurred on April 1, 2018 - 'April Fool's Day', as she notes - while she was performing a fire-breathing act at a charity event in Chicago, aged just 22. She was rushed to hospital and spent a month in intensive care in America by herself, while receiving treatment for the burns. 'I was so swollen,' she recalls. 'My oesophagus was closed and it was hard for me to breathe because it was so swollen around my face, my neck and my chest. 'It was really hard for me to do anything. 'I couldn't eat or drink or do any of those normal things. I had to go back to being a baby again. 'The doctors couldn't even do much for me, because it was such a fresh injury and they needed to wait for the swelling to go down and everything to settle.' 'There was no cure' 6 Her face developed tumours, and she's spent the last five years in and out of hospital Credit: Instagram/@sophirelee When Sophie got home, she was misdiagnosed with a hypertrophic){kind=link}
AS a professional fire-eater, Sophie Lee diced with danger every time she took to the stage.
But at a charity event in 2018, a living nightmare unfolded when an air conditioning unit blasted a fireball back at the model, now 27, causing her face and chest to “go up in flames”.
What followed was five years of intense surgery, chemotherapy, and therapy for the mental trauma, as Sophie’s burns became keloid scars (benign tumours).
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, Sophie, from Darwen, Lancashire, says coming so close to death on numerous occasions has completely changed her outlook on life, and insists she wouldn’t be here without the NHS service she received.
It’s one of the reasons she wants to thank the NHS and support The Sun’s Who Cares Wins Awards.