Courageous photographer James Dunn has asked the people of Merseyside to keep him in their prayers as he undergoes an amputation today.
James, 24, from Whiston, recently launched a £500,000 campaign to help find a cure for his deadly skin condition – and, shortly afterwards, revealed he was battling cancer again.

Now he explains: “After the last operation in November everything was going so well. The tumour on my left hand had been removed and I’d been given the all clear. Then three weeks into recovery I found a few suspicious growths on my hand. Another biopsy confirmed that it was cancer.

“I suppose the real reason I want this doing is because I want to get back to LIVING life. I love my trips abroad and my photography but for the last five months I’ve been stuck in hospitals. All I want is a break. A break from ‘the big C’ so that I can continue crossing things off my bucket list.”
James has Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB), a group of genetic skin conditions which cause the skin to blister and tear at the slightest touch – sufferers of EB are sometimes referred to as having “butterfly skin” due to their layers of skin often being as fragile as the wings of a butterfly.

James, meanwhile, is determined to raise as much money as possible for the #FightEB Appeal.
Late last year he said: “Time has probably run out for me, but I want every other person being born into this world with EB to get to their 24th birthday and know they have another 30 or 40 years ahead of them – not like me, getting to my 24th birthday and knowing it might be one of my last.”
Though he added: “I am too young to pass away with this condition and I don’t want to. I want to fight and beat EB.”