She’s still recovering from her surgery, so it takes a huge physical effort for her to show us her belly.
“I had stitches from my navel downwards,” Elske de Villiers says, gesturing to her abdomen, which is noticeably swollen. “But it doesn’t hurt at all.”
Doctors discovered tumours on the 17-year-old’s liver and left ovary in January and told her she had cancer that was already at such an advanced stage that the only way they could save her life was by giving her a complete hysterectomy.