Vitiligo

The koppen program on the één station in Belgium just broadcasted a reportage on vitiligo, a skin disease which involves a loss of pigmentation on some parts of the body (whereas other parts are unaffected). The result is that those parts of the skin do not tan. The reportage featured three people suffering from the disease; a young girl, one woman who was a bit older, and one rather well-known Belgian actress.

The interesting bit about this reportage, for me, was the name of this disease. I've been a vitiligo patient myself ever since about the age of eight—during summer, my hands often look similar to the hands of the young woman on the picture of the wikipedia page—but no matter how often people would tell me, I always forgot its official name, instead calling it "pigment spots" or something. This blog post is as much an outing that I have this skin disease as it is a way of remembering the name. Heck, while writing this post I got distracted for a while, and when coming back to it, my first subconscious reaction was that it should read "Vertigo". Which is something entirely different, and also not unknown to me. But that's for a different time.

Not that having Vitiligo matters much to me. By itself, it doesn't either hurt or itch; and during winter, when the rest of my skin isn't tanned, it's hardly visible. If at all. All I need to do is to take care that I don't get too much sun during summer, because a tanned skin is a protection against the sun; without it, you'll get sunburn more easily—and those white patches don't tan. And yes, believe me, when those patches get all red because of sunburn, they itch. Like hell. But then, since I'm a computer guy who likes nothing better than to stay inside with a computer all day, that's not really a problem...