Caters
A teenager given six months to live has made a miraculous fight-back thanks to a diet of chocolate, crisps, biscuits and bread.
Elle Wilkinson, 16, is recovering from liver failure thanks to her drastic junk food eating regime.
She had been warned that she could die within months if she failed to get a liver transplant, but has now been officially removed from the donor waiting list.
Elle, from Bridlington, East Yorkshire, shocked doctors when her condition rapidly improved as a result of a high-carbohydrate diet.
"My friends can't believe it - eating chocolate and crisps and all sorts of junk food, and not having to worry about the consequences," Elle told the Daily Mail.
"It is weird having to eat all these foods excessively when we are told to eat in them only in moderation or risk becoming fat - but I'm not complaining.
"The doctor said I could have had the liver problems for three to five years before we even realised.
"But we didn't know that because every symptom I had was what every teenager would go through, such as coughs and colds. It was all pretty scary."
Elle's problems began in August last year when she began vomiting heavily and was rushed to hospital.
Tests revealed she was seriously ill and her liver was failing, so doctors quickly added her to the national transplant list.
Her radical diet has been credited with giving her body extra energy, calories and protein - often lacking in people diagnosed with liver failure.
Elle's mum, Pam Wilkinson-Brown, 50, said: "She needs the carbohydrates to give her the energy. The diet is playing a big factor in controlling the illness. But she will never be fully out of the woods, even if she had a transplant."
Elle was diagnosed with autoimmune hepatitis, a disease which occurs when the body's immune system attacks cells of the liver, and her liver was failing.Whiile she is currently suspended from the transplant list, doctors have warned Elle she may still need a new liver in the future.