My first positive experince with Vitiligo

I am not sure if you are familiar with the skin pigment disorder I have, Vitiligo, so a brief overview. It is a skin pigment disorder specifically a loss of melaninocytes loss of production of melanin. The disease is thought to be autoimmune in nature but ultimately idiopathic. There is not a whole lot of research in it because its incidence is less than 1% worldwide, it’s not very noticeable if you are already light skinned and it’s not really all that harmful except for maybe increasing your chance for sun burn. Yes, this is what Michael Jackson had except his was the more severe form of Vitiligo universalis. The treatment is often topical corticosteroids considering how the condition might be autoimmune but that never helped me, anyways I have resigned to it being incurable. Okay enough background; in my experience I have not had one positive thing ever come out this disease. There has been plenty of shame, self-esteem issues, ridicule and pointing fingers of blameless children, that hurt despite their innocent question. Last night I got a call to an assault. The pt had been assaulted by his neighbors, who fled when the pt’s brother had called the cops. Unfortunately the pt under the influence of ETOH was belligerent and noncompliant towards the cops and they hand cuffed him. When we got to the scene, the pt was sitting in the back of a cop car. The pt due to his altered mental status clearly did not understand why he had been tackled and handcuffed and was naturally very upset so much so that it was interfering with me and my colleagues trying to assess him and determine a treatment plan. Eventually when my partners went to go talk to the cops about what had happened, I noticed the Vitiligo on him in almost the exact same places I have it, hands, knees, elbows and feet all scarily similar to mine. I took off my gloves so he could see and that allowed me to distract him from his current situation. He quickly calmed down and I gained his trust. Through his trust I helped him to truly understand his situation and the need to cooperate with the police as well as me, in the end because he had calmed down the cops released him from his cuffs without charging him with anything. All thanks to a common bond through Vitiligo.