Using the analogy of ‘The car next to you is always a Toyota’, I only started seeing people with Vitiligo when I got it. Until then, I never knew about vitiligo.
It was sometime in 2008 when my wife spotted a pigmentation change on my lip. Thank God She is a Medic and very keen on any changes happening to our bodies in the house. Initially, we were not sure what it was. 3 months down the line the dot on the lip had gradually increased. It had not yet worried me yet since I thought it would still go away. The patch began becoming more brighter and brighter. The black color faded completely on it. That’s when I visited a Dermatologist. Its actually the first time I heard of Vitiligo. We had a chat with the doc. According to him, he had seen worse cases than mine normalise and He assured me that this was a small issue which if i took the medication, all will be well. In a few months it should be gone. I took the meds for several months and given the meds were really expensive, I exhausted my cover in a few months.
During the time I took the medication, the patch actually stopped spreading but it didn’t reduce in size. So there was hope. A week after my cover ended, I didn’t have funds to pick the meds and given it was not sustainable to purchase from my salary I had to stop.
Vitiligo is not a painful condition. In its initial phase, unless someone points it out, you will certainly not notice a thing. As it progresses, that’s when it gets sensitive. The skin is prone to sunburns and hence you need to walk with a sunscreen ointment and a Cap to shield you. When I stopped taking meds, it was like lighting a dry bush. Within two weeks the patch had almost tripled. That’s when it became clear that this was a burden I will live with for a while.
For the next few months and 3-4 years to come, I looked for a cure, visited several Dermatologists but was all in vain. The meds would more or less manage it and reduce the pace to spread but would not cure. Not to pour water on the advances made in the research so far, I have seen one or two people whose vitiligo had actually cleared. I began to be stressed out but I commend my wife who really supported me. She would encourage me, joke about it or just tell me how it’s really not a big deal in our family if I had Vitiligo. But it was a battle within that was the most difficult to overcome….
White add-on Black 