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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
National
Nia Price & Amber O'Connor

Barmaid bullied for missing eye by nasty drinkers gets incredible replacement

A woman with one eye who spent years hating her appearance due to cruel trolls has learned to love herself.

Danni Winrow, 25, had her right eye removed after she was diagnosed with retinoblastoma, aged just six months old.

Despite her bravery - battling the rare cancer - she has been bullied for as long as she remembers for "looking different".

From mean classmates to horrid customers, who put her down while she was working as a bar manager, she faced no end of abuse.

One punter even gave her a £20 tip to "go and fix" her "dead eye".

But after meeting fellow cancer survivors, she has grown to cherish her uniqueness.

After years of bullying, Danni has grown to love her uniqueness (Kennedy News and Media)
And she is happy to go out in public without her prosthetic (Kennedy News and Media)

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Meeting other survivors last August was a transformative experience for Dani - inspiring her to remove her prosthetic eye for the first time in public.

And after learning she "wasn't alone", her self-confidence has blossomed.

Now, the civil servant embraces her looks, wearing a custom-made £162 bright gold sparkly eye and "living her best life".

Danni, from Liverpool, Merseyside, said: "I don't hate the way I look anymore."

"I love wearing my different eye and I go without it," she added. "It just felt like a weight off my shoulders because that's what I wanted - I wanted to be happy and feel good in myself."

She believes had typical retinoblastoma symptoms as a baby - including a glow in her right eye and a distinctive squint.

Danni was diagnosed with cancer as a baby (Kennedy News / Copyright unknown)
But now she is living her 'best life' (Kennedy News and Media)

"My mum kept taking me to the doctors because I kept crying and she knew there was something wrong but the doctors kept saying 'no, she's fine. She's just a baby'.

"But my mum was like 'no, there's definitely something wrong'", Danni explained.

"So they finally sent her to an optometrist who diagnosed me with retinoblastoma and basically said that if I hadn't have gone that week I probably would have been dead within a week."

After having her eye in a life-saving procedure, she "felt different" growing up.

"I've been bullied over my eye for my whole life, I don't really know any different," Danni revealed.

But the harsh comments about her "bog eye" only worsened as she grew up, with Danni claiming the worst comments came from adults when she worked in a bar.

Danni Winrow, from Liverpool, had her right removed as a baby (Kennedy News and Media)

She said: "I'd get comments like 'are you looking at me or are you looking at the person behind me?'

"You think grown men should know better rather than say things like that to a young girl."

But when she met other survivors at an event designed to bring them together, her approach to life shifted.

Danni said: "There was a little girl that we met on that day and I thought I'd love for her to grow up obviously not caring what people think and seeing people than her older than her doing it.

"Because she's got people to look up to. I obviously didn't have anyone that I knew of with one eye or anyone older than me, like a role model."

And she decided to book an appointment to have a gold eye fitted - which she received in February.

"Last year I thought 'you know what, I'm just going to go with it. If everyone's going to comment on it anyway I might as well get something fun'," Danni explained.

She added: "I'd tell others to just embrace it, you can't change it, you can't go back.

"Obviously if I didn't have my eye removed I wouldn't be here now, I can't hate it.

"I'm here and living my best life."

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