'Mystery illness left me covered in brusies and £80K in debt'

'Mystery illness left me covered in brusies and £80K in debt' Former flight attendant Svenja Knight's health problems began when she was just 14 A woman left in £80,000 of debt after taking out loans for treatment for a debilitating medical condition has paid off £5,764.27 in just two months - using micropayments. Svenja Knight, 32, was diagnosed with lipoedema in 2024, a condition which left her in extreme pain and unable to work. She was unable to get treatment on the NHS, so took out a £24,000 loan to pay for surgery but then took out more loans totalling £31,000 to pay her other loans off. By July 2026, her debts had spiralled to £80,640.77, so she decided to use TikTok to start paying off her bills with micropayments. Svenja pays as little as £1 depending on the amount of interactions - likes, comments, or saves - she gets from her videos sharing her debt journey. She then takes a screenshot of the total amount each day and calculates it – which works out around an eighth of a penny per engagement which she pays out of her own pocket towards her debt. So far, she has made a small payment every day, for 71 days which has totalled £5,764.27. Svenja, from York, said: “I just couldn’t keep up with the payments; I kept taking out more loans to keep on top of my medical bills. “I know it sounds stupid, because you shouldn’t get into debt just to pay your debt off, but I’ve never been educated on any of that stuff. I was basically just trying to survive and it just kept piling up more and more. I’ve paid over £5,000 so far and it’s a huge weight off my shoulders.” From the age of 14, after she got her first period, Svenja began to struggle with her health and her legs and body became covered in bruises. "I was so confused, wondering what I’d bumped in to," she said. She then began to get extreme pain in her legs, and arms, which affected her mobility, and symptoms would get noticeably worse when she was going through hormonal changes, for example, coming on or off the contraceptive pill. “I’d be in extreme pain, my legs felt like lead and it made walking really difficult”, she said. “It was the same with my arms - I couldn’t even dry my hair because it was too painful to lift them up for more than a few seconds.” As her mother had always suffered from the same symptoms, Svenja just assumed that what she was experiencing was “normal”, until one day, she came across an Instagram post of someone discussing her experience with lipoedema. “I thought, ‘I can really identify with that and I went ahead and got a diagnosis'," she said. She went to the doctors, and in 2024 was diagnosed with lipoedema, an abnormal build-up of fat in the arms and legs, which can cause swollen legs, pain and tenderness. There is currently no cure, and although liposuction can be used to treat severe symptoms, it is often not available on the NHS. The condition is hereditary, and Svenja’s mum has also now gotten a diagnosis. “A lot of doctors are actually not educated on lipoedema as an illness which is why I, after trying to get diagnosed the traditional way, had to actually pay for a private diagnosis in order to even get assessed and diagnosed properly.” As Svenja’s condition was severely impacting her daily life, she looked into getting liposuction, to help her symptoms, and realised that she would not qualify for surgery on the NHS. “I was disappointed and also angry”, she said. “I couldn’t even take my dogs for a walk anymore”. Around the time of her diagnosis, Svenja was working as a flight attendant, but flying made her symptoms much worse as cabin pressure can cause water retention and swelling. She often had to call in sick and was eventually made redundant from her position. Feeling like she had no other option, Svenja took out a loan for £24,000, which covered two liposuction surgeries in Germany, which is where she was living at the time. The procedures in March 2024 and June 2024 both went well, with over 20 litres of “ill fat” removed from Svenja’s body. She recently completed a 10k walk - something she never thought she would be able to do before. However, it also left her with large amounts of debt, and she found herself with an enormous monthly bill of £773, around 45% of her monthly wages from her job as a virtual assistant. In order to be able to keep up with the payments, Svenja took out a loan of £2,149.25p in April 2024, followed by three more loans between May and July 2024 totalling £31,000, to help afford living costs, and her debts spiralled. Then, in September 2025, Svenja developed severe chronic fatigue, meaning she could no longer work. “It got to the point where even just getting up and making myself breakfast was too much”, she said. “I kept trying to make myself work, but my body was paying for it, so I just couldn’t do it anymore”. As Svenja was no longer able to work, she then had to take out another loan of for £20,000 in September 2025. She also has £1,200 remaining to repay on her PayPal credit, but an overdraft of £840 and a student loan of £450 have been repaid since she started her journey. In April 2026, she was then diagnosed with ADHD and in May she was diagnosed with autism, both of which contributed to her extreme burnout. By July 2026, her debts had spiralled to £80,000. “It just kept snowballing in the wrong direction”, she said. Realising she needed to make a serious change, Svenja decided to start using the micropayments method to pay off her debts, after seeing TikTok content creators doing the same. The method involves adding up daily engagement and then making micropayments based on the figure. She began posting daily to her TikTok account, @svenjapaysitoff, and makes daily payments based off the previous day’s engagement in the video. “I pay an eighth of a penny per engagement, so sometimes my daily payments can be £1 or £2, but then sometimes people kindly make contributions after seeing my videos, and I can pay off a couple of hundred quid”, she said. She is also hoping to gain 10,000 followers, so that she can access the TikTok creator fund, and then get paid for her videos. Svenja is currently on day 71 of her micropayments challenge, and has so far paid off £5,764.27, meaning she has £74,876.50 left to pay off. She also recently considered applying for a Debt Relief Order (DRO) a formal way of dealing with debts in England and Wales. If approved, the DRO freezes your debts for 12 months, and then if your financial situation has not changed by the end of the year the debts get written off. A DRO stays on your credit score for six years and can make it difficult to apply for things like mortgages or credit cards. But ultimately, after doing her own research and seeking advice, Svenja decided against it, as it could potentially harm her chances when applying for UK citizenship. Svenja is also currently applying for PIP and is hoping to be able to work again when her chronic fatigue symptoms improve. “Some people might be wondering why I didn't apply for any financial aid earlier. “I would've if I could've. But because my husband's income was - on paper - always too high for me to receive any benefits, I simply didn't qualify for it. As for the PIP, I could only apply for it after having been diagnosed with ADHD and autism.” You can donate to her GoFundMe here