May, 1998 - My daughter's hemangioma started out looking like a small red rash on the surface of her skin. At age -3 weeks (she was born 6 weeks premature and was in the preemie unit at the hospital for 3 weeks before she could come home) the doctors told me it was a hemangioma. I had never heard of this type of birthmark before and I knew nothing about it. I asked to see a dermatologist. My request was denied. They told me that it wasn't necessary and instead the resident neonatologist came by to answer my questions.

The neonatologist told me there was absolutely nothing I could do. He said that the Hemangioma would begin to raise up off the skin and it may grow. I didn't want to beleive this. One of the nurses mentioned that she had heard that you could treat hemangioma's with laser treatment so I mentioned this to the neonatologist. He said we could try laser treatment but that we wouldn't be able to start the treatments until my daughter was at least 2 years old. WRONG!!

Lucky for me my pediatrician came to the hospital to meet my baby. She told me that she also thought we wouldn't be able to start any kind of treatment until she was at least 2 years old, but she said she wasn't sure about that and she wanted to refer me to a pediatric dermatologist named Dr. Julie Francis who specialized in this area. I brought my daughter to Dr. Francis when she was about 2 months old. By this time her Hemangioma was very large and red.

Dr. Francis told me she thought we should begin laser treatment immediatly. She also told me that unfortunatly alot of doctors are not aware that if you can catch the hemangioma before it has begun to raise off the skin there's a possiblity that you can stop the growth. I was pretty angry when I heard this. If I would have known this I would have started the laser treatment before my daughter's hemangioma became 1/4" raised off her skin! Dr. Francis showed me some before and after pictures of some children she had worked with and I was impressed and optomistic at this point.

Around the same time I went to see a doctor in the dermatology department at the local Children's Hospital. This doctor told me that she thought I should just leave it alone. I told her I had been doing my own research and that I knew that not all Hemangioma's go away quickly and that I was worried that my daughter's Hemangioma would not go away until she was 7 to 10 years old. I told the doctor I was concerned that other children would tease her. The doctor just told me that it was only my pride talking and that children were really not so cruel. I felt like asking her if she would feel the same way if it was her daughter??

July, 2000 - Shea is now just over 2 years old and her hemangioma has definetly improved. I will try and get a more current photo, the last one I have is of her at 18 months but you can already see the improvement. She now has the laser treatment every 3 months. Dr. Francis wants to let the hemangioma regress as much as possible on its own since it has been improving over the last few months. Of course I am still anxious to have it gone all together but I am much more at peace with it then I was in the beginning. I am hoping that by the time she is 3 or 4 years old it will be completly gone. I want her to be able to go to school and not be treated differently than the other children.

Though I have had some very difficult experiences with the people making rude and insensitive comments about my daughter, I have also been touched by the kindness and unconditional acceptance that I have experienced with some adults and mostly other children when they see Shea. One little girl told me "her strawberry mark just makes her even more special".