Morgan's story
Morgan was born in June 2005 with a blue-purple mark on
her upper left arm. I realised straight away that it was a
birthmark - I had the same on my face.
The birthmark grew with Morgan and by the age of 5 it
measured 8cm by 5cm and was starting to cause her pain. We were
referred to Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow and had a combined meeting
with a dermatologist, a plastic surgeon and radiologist who
referred her for a MRI scan and requested my own medical notes to
compare my results with Morgan's. The results confirmed what we
thought - Morgan had inherited our family's very rare glomovenous
malformations.
GVMs are formed from abnormal blood vessels and glomus cells
which regulate body temperature. GVMs don't generally respond to
laser treatment or sclerotherapy as these just take away the
physical appearance rather than the painful faulty cells so
Morgan's only option was surgery to remove as much as they
could.
Morgan's surgery took place in February 2011. Surgery took
just over an hour and left her with lots of internal stitches, glue
and steristrips.
We were given silicone pads to help reduce the scarring
which Morgan had an allergic reaction to but thankfully the scar
has healed and reduced really well. Unfortunately due to the width
of the mark it was impossible to remove it all so there are patches
running either side of the 9cm scar.
GVMs can appear at any time and Morgan now has about 20 very
small ones all over her body. Only a few are causing her pain so
she has decided to wait until she is bigger to have them
removed.
Our case is quite rare as there are several members of our
family with the same condition. We were asked if we could send
samples to a clinic that are analysing DNA to see if GVMs are
caused by a faulty gene and we happily agreed.