Tanner

1Hello! I’m Tanner, and I’d like to tell you a little about Vitiligo. When I was about six years old, white spots started showing up around my waist. My mom didn’t know what the spots were, so she took me to the doctor’s office. They weren’t sure what it was either, so they told her to take me to a specialist in Jacksonville. This doctor told my mom that I had Vitiligo.

Vitiligo is a condition where your body thinks the color in your skin is bad and attacks it. This makes your skin lose color and causes you to have white spots. It can happen anywhere on your body and can sometimes make you solid white. There is no proven cure for Vitiligo, but there are some medicines that may work to help you have less spots. The places on the skin that lose pigment get sunburned very easily so I always have to use sun screen. If I don’t, it might cause me to have skin cancer later.

Sometimes it can be hard having Vitiligo because people stare at me. This happens more in the summer time when I’m wearing a swim suit – pretty much every day! Some people will ask me or my mom what happened to me and some will just keep staring. I usually try to ignore them, but sometimes it really annoys me. Other people are afraid it might be contagious, so they move away from me. Vitiligo is not contagious! If you see someone with it, don’t back up because you think you’ll catch it – you’ll just end up hurting someone’s feelings!

There are some things that make having Vitiligo easier. One neat thing is that I get to meet others who also have it. Last year I went to a conference in Clearwater and met all these other kids with the same thing. That was the first time I had seen anyone other than an adult with Vitiligo! I made lots of friends from other states and now we e-mail each other all the time! Another thing that I thought was really cool was being in the “Embracing Diversity” calendar last year. This is a calendar just for kids that have Vitiligo, so it was pretty special to me.

Now, the next time you see one of us with Vitiligo, you will know some stuff about it. You will know that it is not burns or scars. It’s not harmful or contagious to you, so there’s nothing to worry about. I know the spots may look weird, but we’re just regular people like you. You might even decide, like some of my friends have, that Vitiligo looks pretty cool!

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