A teenager had to have her face removed so surgeons could re-build her features after she was severely injured in a horror car crash.

Chloe Thomson was left in a wheelchair for a year after breaking ‘almost every bone in her body’ when the vehicle she was in hit a tree in Argyll and Bute, Scotland.

Doctors had to perform complex surgeries including removing her face and realigning both her legs, which had been badly broken.

Miss Thomson, 19, has told of the torment she endured at school from cruel bullies who ‘made life unbearable’ by mocking her looks.

The abuse even caused her to black out the accident, which happened when she was 11 years old, and she would deny it ever happened.

But in a Facebook post showing her injuries the teenager said she is now in a place where she is happy about the way she looks.

The post, which has thousands of likes, said Miss Thomson was ‘finally at a place where I am happy with the way I look and I never thought I ever would be again’.

She also told bullies to ‘leave her alone’ and that she had ‘heard it all’ since the accident.

Miss Thomson, of Gourock, Renfrewshire, told the Daily Mirror: ‘I broke almost every bone in my body and face but I don’t want what happened to me to define who I am anymore.

 ‘I don’t recognise the girl before the accident or the girl after, they seem like different people. I finally feel like me now.’

The accident happened in October 2008 on the A815 between Strachur and Dunoon when the car she was a passenger in left the road and hit the tree.

The tree then crashed down on top of the vehicle and shattered a window close to Miss Thomson’s face.

She was airlifted to the Royal Alexandra Hospital, Paisley, and then transferred to Yorkhill Children’s Hospital in Glasgow, with her mother Jennifer, 37, warned to prepare for the worst.

Metal rods were inserted into her legs and the facial reconstruction surgery took nine hours, with her nose, jaw and eye sockets all repaired, restoring her eyesight.

A fragment of her nose was also embedded in her brain during the accident which left surgeons concerned there may have been permanent damage.

Her mother told the Mirror: ‘They had to take her whole face off, strip it back and put her face back together. It was the worst time of my life.’

She was home in time for Christmas 2008 but said she ‘didn’t look in a mirror for a month’ or speak to any of her friends as she went through several physio and hospital appointments.

Miss Thomson then changed schools but said she felt like an ‘outsider’ wherever she went, enduring abuse over the internet.

Now Miss Thomson, who hopes to become a makeup artist, has accepted what happened and decided to address all the hurtful comments through the Facebook post.

She added she feels more confident now and is hoping to return to school to study for her highers, a national school-leaving certificate in Scotland.