Mum is given ten years to live after Hull floods trigger fatal skin disease

Former nurse Lynn Hind, 52, was one of the thousands of people whose home was ruined by the floods in the summer of 2007.

Since the disaster she has been diagnosed with Scleroderma - a fatal skin condition which also attacks internal organs and for which there is no cure.

Doctors have told her the illness was brought on by stress linked to the floods.

Speaking on the third anniversary of the deluge, which wrecked 20,000 homes in the region, she said: "I've been told I will live for about nine to ten years after diagnosis, if I'm taken care of.

"If the rain hadn't come I wouldn't be in this situation. I knew something was wrong about a year after the floods, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

"My GP said I might have post traumatic stress due to the floods. A year later they sat me down and gently told me I had Scleroderma.

"I was referred to a consultant and she explained that I would have had a rogue gene that stayed dormant until something triggered it.

"I told her about my life and she said the only thing she could think of that could have possibly triggered it was the stress that I suffered due to the floods in 2007."

Mrs Hind is now classed as disabled and cannot work. She is taking immune suppression tablets to limit the immediate effects of the condition.

She added: "The disease has taken a lot from me. There is no cure for it, it's a case of them trying to handle it.

Mrs Hind and her husband Dave were forced to live upstairs in their flooded home while water swilled around in the ruins of the ground floor.

She said: "There were several inches of this disgusting water in the whole of the ground floor which was awash. It was horrendous and the water stayed there for ten days until it subsided. At its worst it was halfway up our garage door.

"We had to live upstairs for all this time and wear wellies to go round the ground floor of the house. The stench was terrible. Also, our bathroom and toilet is downstairs so we couldn't wash and we had to go to the toilet in a bucket and leave the contents outside.

"Plus I have always had a fear of water. When I was six I fell in a lake in a park and had to be dragged out by the park keeper. This brought it all back and must have led to me getting this condition."

Once the water had finally subsided the family had to fit new flooring for the entire ground floor plus replace ruined electrics, furniture and other belongings.

Mrs Hind said: "I'm not depressed, but I'm angry that I have been dealt a hand that I didn't deserve. But you've got to get on with it."

Kim Fligelstone from The Scleroderma Society said the condition affects one in 10,000 people.

She said: "The cause of Scleroderma is still unknown. It is not contagious. It's believed that people with Scleroderma have a genetic predisposition for the illness and often environmental factors act as triggers for the disease onset.

"Environmental factors include stress and although it's almost impossible to prove, they do think that when people have suffered stress it is likely that is what brought Scleroderma on.

"It's possible this lady could have developed Scleroderma as a result of the floods. At a meeting I went to recently one of the professors was saying he had two patients who were police officers. They had both been stabbed and developed Scleroderma. He believes that was due to the stress of what happened to them."

The floods which ravaged the city when saw two months' rain fall in just hours - and staggeringly, 78 people remain in temporary accommodation three years on.