WARNING: Distressing content. If you passed 22-year-old Kiersten walking her dog Charlie around the Sunshine Coast, you would have no idea of her hidden trauma. With dozens of painful abscesses and boils all over her body, the student nurse is constantly in and out of hospital from the debilitating condition. But the brave Queenslander is fed up with keeping her suffering a secret, and wants others with her disorder to know they are not alone.
Kiersten has stage three HS, meaning the condition is severe, widespread, she has significant scarring and the abscesses have formed a ‘tunnelling system’ underneath the skin, connecting the lesions. It means that, if one abscess is knocked accidentally, another lesion connected by a ‘tunnel’ could burst instead. Horrified by the uncertainty of her condition, Kiersten felt alone. “It is in quite sensitive areas ,” she says. “I was too embarrassed to tell anyone.