59-year-old woman's face covered with tumors due to rare disease (photo)

A 59 year-old woman who has faced a lifetime of taunts from cruel trolls about hundreds of tumors that cover her face will soon undergo a life-changing operation to transform her looks, reports The Daily Mail.

Annetjie de Wit, from Pretoria, South Africa, has long been afraid to go out for fear of what people would say about her face—which is covered in lesions due to a rare genetic skin condition.

De Wit suffers neurofibromatosis, which affects between 1 in 3,000 and 1 in 5,000 people, and causes non-cancerous tumors to grow along the nerves of the skin.

She decided to give up work after a colleague threw nasty jibes at her, leading to disabling self-consciousness.

But now, De Wit's nightmare is nearly over.

While there is no medication or treatment that can fully cure her chronic condition, aesthetic treatments can improve the appearance of the growths on her skin.

She has been chosen as a candidate on a TV show that helps patients like her by offering them transformative medical treatments.

Currently, she is undergoing intensive laser therapy with private aesthetician Dr. Riekie Smit to burn away the disfiguring lesions.

"Annetjie’s treatment involves a laser ablation procedure to burn the lesions, accompanied by radiofrequency with needles to reduce the deep tissue from where they originate. We’re trying to make most of the lesions smaller and those that don’t respond will be surgically removed," said Dr. Smit.

By November, some 80 percent of the tumors will be either destroyed or considerably shrunk, he added.