At first glance, 14-year-old Nadia Ilse exudes an air of confidence that many other girls her age lack. That confidence is hard won.
"I felt horrible. I felt like I was like dirt," she said, in an interview with "Good Morning America." "They said that I have the biggest ears that they've ever seen. They called me 'Dumbo,' 'elephant ears.'"
The teasing and bullying escalated, and Nadia, of Cumming, Ga., started to believe the negativity.
"I kind of got into this shell and I actually skipped school a lot," she said. "I made excuses. I would say my stomach hurt, say that I was sick even though I wasn't."
Nadia would cry a lot on the way home from the bus stop and at night before she went to sleep. It got so bad that Nadia even contemplated suicide.
"I actually did think about suicide but I wasn't pushed, I didn't really want to. I didn't think that was the solution," she said.
Nadia's troubles came as a shock to her mother. Because Lynda Ilse had recently been laid off, and had a 9-year-old son, Joshua, who was battling cerebral palsy, Nadia didn't want to bother her mother with her problems.
"I'm heartbroken about it," Lynda Ilse said, speaking of her daughter's torment, including her thoughts of suicide. "I didn't realize that it was that bad. She would mostly say that she has migraines."
Eventually, Nadia told her mother everything and begged for surgery to pin her ears back. Lynda Ilse couldn't afford it, so she turned to the Little Baby Face Foundation, a Manhattan-based organization that provides free surgery for children with facial deformities who have a financial need.
Teased about her big ears since she was 7 years old, Nadia found school a nightmare. Her classmates tormented her, and she couldn't bear to look at herself in the mirror.
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