Jackie

Hey ya'll!

I'm Jackie. I live in West Palm Beach, Florida. I’m 15; I am going to be a junior next school year. I first got vitiligo when I was about 9 years old. It grew for a while and then started to fade. It never really went away, though.

Last June, I went to Germany and talked to Dr. Schallreuter and got a NB-UVB lamp. Well, I did that for like 3 months and then quit it for a while. I just had too much stuff going on. When volleyball season ends in a couple weeks, I’m gonna start it up again ‘cause it worked. But anyway, on to the vitiligo part... it was very hard for me. One of the first times I was ever teased about it was when I was about 10 or so. I was at the Palm Beach Mall and this group of older guys came up to me and said, "ewe…what's wrong with your legs?" I really wanted to say something worse back to him like, "ewe! What’s wrong with your face" (or something like that... but I just held it back). Ever since then I like never wear shorts, very seldom if ever. If someone asks what it is I simply say, "vitiligo - I just don’t have pigment in my skin." Half the people I tell don’t know what vitiligo or pigment is so it may take a second or two of explaining.

Anyway, about my future, I used to want to be a dermatologist and wanted to find a cure for vitiligo. I'm more into animals though and want to either become a veterinarian or a high school biology teacher. Now that I think of becoming a dermatologist again... that’s another option for me :)

But I also have something else to say. A good buddy of mine Joe lives down here too. He lives in Lake Worth. He has A LOT of vitiligo too. I love that we live close to each other so I can have someone to talk to about it. We also have a lot of other things in common. He's never been to one of the meetings in Clearwater. His mom went last year but he couldn't because he had summer school. Anyway, there are a lot more people than you think with vitiligo. Sometimes it's cool; it's God's artwork! I'm just painted different than many other people.