A woman has gone viral after revealing how being born with a “small bruise” turned into her arm swelling in size.
Olivia Klopchin, 19, from Springfield, Vermont, US, was diagnosed with a vascular malformation at two months old when her family spotted a bruise on the inside of her elbow – which had been there since birth.
A vascular malformation is an abnormal development of blood vessels, which can cause discolouration or protrusions in the affected region.
For Olivia, this meant her arm and hand grew extremely large and disproportionally to the rest of her body, and caused her skin to be slightly discoloured.
In Olivia’s case, this has led to her arm and hand growing extremely large with the skin slightly discoloured.
The young woman has taken to TikTok to share insights into how she handles day-to-day life with her fully-functioning arm.
A recent clip has gone viral with her revealing the shockingly subtle early sign that something was amiss – a seemingly innocent bruise on her arm.
In a TikTok, which has garnered 2.8 million views and over 101,000 likes, Olivia says: “Being born with a small bruise on my arm…”
A person singing, ‘How bad can it possibly be?’ is heard, followed by a cut to a video of Olivia posing with her hands on her hips, showing her vascular malformation.
One user commented: “My jaw dropped.”
“That ain’t no bruise,” another viewer commented.
Someone else said: “No wayyyyy.” [sic]
“EXCUSE ME,” another person wrote.
Other users compared her to the Hulk and Nik Naks crisps.
One person asked: “Do you at least have Hulk like superpowers in that arm?”
Olivia has also been inundated with comments asking her why she hasn’t had her arm amputated – something she has chosen not to do.
“I’ve definitely had a lot of interesting reactions to my arm on the Internet,” she previously told NeedToKnow.co.uk.
“Some people are so awesome about it and tell me how beautiful I am and how much they love my confidence.
“But then, there are the negative people who try to tear me down and break my wall, but there’s always going to be negative people on the Internet – that’s something we can’t escape, whether we want to or not.
“Negativity on the Internet has consumed so many people’s lives, but I choose not to let it consume mine.”
For Olivia, amputating her arm has never even been a question, though it has impacted her life.
She said: “I never had a rough time with it growing up.
“Of course, I got stares from people, but I understood at a young age that I was different and that people were going to stare, and that there was nothing I could do about it.
“With vascular malformations, there is pain, because we do get blood clots and are formed from the veins not having a muscular wall around them, so our veins expand and blood can’t flow through easily so it clots up – and blood clots can be very, very painful!
“Fortunately for myself, I don’t get them as often as a lot of other people that I know with vascular malformations — I’d say I get three bad ones a year. Other than that, I get a couple monthly, but they’re not too painful.
“Other than pushing through the pain, I was able to do sports, I would hang out with friends, and my friends would question things about my arm, but I was always open and willing to answer the questions they had.
“I am truly thankful that my arm hasn’t given me any downsides to life.
“I could consider the pain a downside but I choose not to.”
