MUM Lorna Pollard has finally got the diagnosis she’s been waiting to hear for seven years after appearing on Jeremy Kyle’s new TV show.

The 48-year-old has been riddled with more than 70 painful lumps under her skin, including on her spine, but medics had been unable to confirm what they are.

Frustrated, and as a last resort, Ms Pollard, of Portway, in Oare near Pewsey, applied two weeks ago for ITV’s new daytime programme – Jeremy Kyle’s Emergency Room – in the hope they could shed some light on the agonising and debilitating symptoms which can leave her bedridden.

Within days, the mother-of-three got a phone call from producers asking her to come to their studio clinic in Manchester.

Last Tuesday in front of millions of viewers she appeared on national TV with her boyfriend Michael Breakspear, 50, and was told by Jeremy and medic Dr Ian Campbell that she has Dercum’s Disease, one of the rarest incurable conditions in the world.

“I did a radical thing and went on Jeremy Kyle,” the former soldier said. “I had no other option.

“I’ve been back and forth to the doctors for years and years and they would say to me ‘don’t be so silly it’s fat’.

“I knew I had Dercum’s about eight months ago from the research I’d done but I wasn’t diagnosed and doctors don’t know about it because it’s so rare.

“They say it’s the third rarest disease in the world and the second most painful.”

The condition is caused by lumps of fat called lipomas growing on nerve endings. They can be surgically removed but grow back again and in some cases, if they move to a vital organ or block an artery, the lumps can prove fatal.

“There are only 22 people in the UK registered with Dercum but there’s about 96 who are suffering with the symptoms and cannot get a diagnosis,” Ms Pollard said.

She is taking painkillers to numb the pain and undergoing further tests through the NHS.

Although relieved to be diagnosed, because the disease is so rare and no cure has yet been found, Ms Pollard is trying to get in contact with American doctor Karen Herbst who is one of the only people researching it in the hopes more awareness can be raised.

She added: “I’m scared for the future. I don’t know what to do or who to turn to now. I’ve been on this programme and they’ve diagnosed me but what do I now?

“I need to get doctors in the UK interested in this disease because no one’s researching it, not one doctor.”

The episode of Jeremy Kyle’s Emergency Room that Ms Pollard appeared on can still be viewed on ITV Player.