Hope Schiefer was 13 years old when she squeezed what she thought was an ugly pimple.
It didn’t disappear. It grew for 19 years until it became a hemangioma covering part of her face and neck, a vascular tumor attached to a major vein in her face. Doctors in College Station, Texas, can no longer operate on her: the risk of paralysis, or of it reaching her brain, lungs, or heart, is too high. And as a single mother, Hope decided that her son needs her alive rather than perfect.
On social media, people compare her to Quagmire, the character from Family Guy. But Hope, now 32, gave her tumor a name: Betty. A gesture to regain control over something that, for nearly two decades, controlled her self-esteem, her childhood, and the way she looked at herself in the mirror.
“A visible defect does not make someone less deserving of love”, she says now, thinking about what she wants to teach her son.