His parents abandoned him because of a handicap, and he became an example of self-improvement: “I’m proud of my face.”

“My birth parents were afraid of my appearance and abandoned me. 36 hours after I was born. It was difficult.” Jono Lancaster Born 37 years ago in West Yorkshire, North of England Treacher-Collins syndrome.

This syndrome exists because the baby is in the womb Mutation of genes responsible for making proteinsIt plays a fundamental role in the development of bones and tissues during pregnancy.

as a consequence, The face may have abnormalities such as flat or sunken cheekbonesVery small jaws, small or no ears, a downward slope of the cleft between the upper and lower eyelids, and hair on the scalp extending to the cheeks, according to the US National Library of Medicine.

“I don’t have cheekbones, so my eyes look like this,” Lancaster says to the camera. BBC. And touching his ears, he says: “I call them ‘my little Bart Simpson ears'”.

At two weeks old, a girl named Jean visited him at the hospital. When he was 5 years old, Jean was able to adopt him. “Throughout that whole process, he welcomed other kids, all with different disabilities.”Jono recalled.

Lancaster started school like any other child, but as a teenager he had to endure teasing and bullying from other students.

“The older kids pressed their eyes down and chanted about me“, he says. “I wanted to hurt them as much as I was hurt. I was in a very dark and angry place when I thought about my birth parents.

“Looking back, I have so many wonderful memories from high school, but I tried my best to fit in behind those moments,” he admits. His negative sense of self grew over the years.

“As I got older, other people started having relationships, but that didn’t happen to me. That’s when I developed a lot of hatred for my face,” she says.

One day he wanted to contact his biological parents, together with his mother Jean, wrote a letter to say that he was well and that he was happy. Two weeks later Both received a signed reply: “We want nothing to do with it. Future attempts will be ignored. Being rejected again by those two people hurt.

A few years ago I was asked to give a speech in school. It was there, seeing the children’s reaction, that he thought he should spend more time setting an example of improvement.

“I was standing in the playground and two kids ran up to me and said, ‘Jono, Jono, Jono, can you show me your hearing aid?’, ‘Jono, Jono, I live with my grandparents,’ ‘Jono, my mum and dad don’t know’, ‘ Jono, I’m being bullied for A, B or C”.

On that playground, I said to myself, ‘I have to do more of this.’ That is why, Lancaster has already starred in two documentaries and has been working on her first book for the past two yearsEntitled Not all heroes wear capes (In Spanish, Not all heroes wear capes) “It’s about the heroes I’ve met in my life and how I finally became my own hero. Because the truth is that my life has been filled with a lot of love and a lot of adventure,” he said.

Also known as Francesetti-Swallen-Klein syndrome or mandibulofacial dysostosisThe rare condition is named after London ophthalmologist Edward Treacher Collins, who first described the defect in the medical literature in the early 1900s.

According to the British National Health Service It is a congenital condition It can be inherited from one or both parents, depending on the mutated gene. Symptoms are highly variable and can be severe or moderate. -Less invisible-, meaning cases are underreported. However, there is an estimated 1 case in every 50,000 births. It is usually noticed on the cheeks, eyes, ears and jaws..

It also means that the baby is born with a cleft palate and has difficulty breathing and feeding. Additionally, Abnormalities in the structure of the outer and middle ear can lead to hearing loss and speech difficulties.

Babies with this need medical monitoring and may need surgery to correct birth defects. occasionally, Brain and behavioral abnormalities have also been reported Microcephaly and psychomotor retardation, as noted by the National Organization for Rare Disorders in the United States.

BBC World