INSIDE EDITION talks to a winner of America's Next Top Model about the agonizing skin condition that nearly ruined her career.
America's Next Top Model winner CariDee English tearfully revealed to INSIDE EDITION how a painful skin condition nearly ruined her modeling career.
Photos show the then blond haired beauty last year when raw, blistery patches covered 70 percent of her body.
"It cracks and it bleeds and its so painful and it's so itchy."
CariDee suffers from psoriasis and she's the first celebrity to put a face to the skin disorder that causes a person's immune system to attack its own body often producing horrific inflammation.
"It was something that really robbed a lot of my childhood and my adolescence."
As a child, she would hide her skin disease under long sleeves and leggings.
"The boys would look at my skin and say 'Oh my god what is that?'"
And the five-foot-ten stunner was told to forget about her dream of becoming a model. But with the help of medication, her skin cleared just in time to compete on America's Next Top Model in 2006.
The young woman, who'd struggled her entire life to be accepted, actually won the top prize.
CariDee went on to work as a fashion model and a TV show personality but a year ago her psoriasis came back, threatening to derail her career permanently. That's when she found a cutting edge treatment through Santa Monica, California dermatologist Paul Yamauchi.
Yamauchi said, "When I first saw Cari she had very bad psoriasis. Probably one of the worse case I have ever seen."
He gave the 25-year-old an injectable medication called Stelara that she uses once every three months.
She says her skin is perfectly clear and she's now a paid spokesperson for the product. This top model hopes to be a role model for others who suffer from the same disease.
"I decided to get a voice. Let people know that I have psoriasis but psoriasis doesn't have me."
For more information on psoriasis go to psoriasis.org.
