WFAA in Dallas, TX did a news story on the 2006 Nevus Conference happening at the Marriott hotel there. Since I’m not sure how long they are going to leave their news story up I thought it wise to have a mirror link to the story and video on my site.

Rare skin condition causes trouble for children
05:48 PM CDT on Wednesday, July 12, 2006

By JANET ST. JAMES / WFAA-TV
Also Online
Janet St. James reports

Video

A cool swim on a hot day, ordinary fun for most kids at camp. However, some youngsters have to swim in a long sleeve and a hat.
Those that do all share a rare skin condition called nevus, though four-year-old Danielle calls it something nicer: “Pretty spots.”
Those pretty spots are actually moles, some quite large, that cover the entire body. For years Megan Fields thought she was alone.
“As far as I knew until I was 21, I was the only one who had it. That would’ve been very comforting to me, because I would say a lot of my emotional and mental issues during middle school and high school stemmed from feeling no one understood me and what came from nevus,” said Fields.
That’s why the Nevus outreach has organized this gathering in Southlake. Michelle Sibbons brought her daughter all the way from Australia.
There’s so little research on this random condition that affects 1 in 200,000. These are the only people who can answer her questions.
“If we notice something is happening, and say, is it normal that these spots keep appearing? And then you get answers back and that say: Yes, they’ll appear for a long time,” said Michelle Sibbons, mother of a nevus child.
Cameron Ingram knows his spots keep coming. They are making him more vulnerable to deadly skin cancers and teasing.
So what he likes most about “nevus camp” is the message it sends to those kids.
“We’re all the same, we just have different skin,” said Cameron Ingram, a 12-years-old nevus patient.

E-mail jstjames@wfaa.com
© 2006 WFAA-TV

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