Apparently the first stage is disbelief

Last night I dreamed that gayboy friends of ours, R & J, won custody of Lucky. You know that overwhelming feeling of relief when you wake up from a bad dream?

Often I catch myself thinking that Lucky's diagnosis is a dream; that any moment I'll wake up and find her right arm is just as fat and pretty as her left.

Thinking rationally

Okay, two days later and I'm not feeling quite so freaked out.

1. Lovergirl suggested that one reason why there is a high correlation with abnormalities is that people don't usually go to a specialist for a mere birthmark. So maybe it is only the babies with more severe abnormalities go to the specialists and then they notice this correlation with CMTC. Maybe there are all these people running around, perfectly normal, with CMTC, who have just never thought to go and have it identified. Particularly as it fades after two years.

2. As Anon (Suse?) pointed out, a lot of the associated abnormalities are also present at birth, so if Lucky hasn't got them now, she's not going to.

3. Actually a lot of the abnormalities lumped in the 50% figure are fairly mild - like a portwine birthmark (and Lucky does have that, so hopefully that's used up her quota of associated abnormalities) - and others, like glaucoma, are manageable if you catch them early. We have to go to the opthalmologist every six months during her childhood, apparently.

4. As my sister pointed out, while some instances cited on the net of atrophy or hypertrophy of a limb is extreme, for most of the people with this symptom it amounts to a difference of 1 or 2 cm difference in diameter between the limbs. I think that's the one I've been worrying about the most, imagining Lucky as a teenager with a tiny little arm that hasn't grown since she was a baby.

5. Some of the people on the net with CMTC have it all over their bodies. Lucky only has it on one arm, and just the forearm.

5. And finally, if she should happen to have problems, she surely couldn't do much better than having a psychologist and an occupational therapist for parents.

I really really valued getting all your messages of support. It's times like this that you really like to know someone is noticing your little life, isn't it?

S**t

Lucky has a sort of birthmark on her right arm. It looks like very prominent veins starting on the back of her hand and snaking up her forearm to her elbow. Today we went to the dermatologist who told us she has cutis marmorata telangiectatica congenita, do you believe it, a rare disorder of the blood vessels. About a hundred cases have been recorded worldwide since the condition was first identified in 1972, so Lucky has really worked hard to come up with something obscure. The marks will fade within the next two years, so the blood vessels themselves are no big deal. However,

Approximately 50 percent of affected individuals have additional associated abnormalities including pink or dark red, irregularly shaped patches of skin (nevus flammeus); loss of muscle tissue (wasting) on one side of the body (hemiatrophy); elevated fluid pressure within the eye (glaucoma); and/or undergrowth (hypotrophy) of one leg. A distinct subdivision of CMTC has been identified that is known as macrocephaly-CMTC. In M-CMTC, the skin abnormalities of CMTC occur in association with an abnormally large head (macrocephaly) and the potential development of neurological abnormalities. Most cases of CMTC and M-CMTC occur randomly for no apparent reason (sporadically).

Fifty percent. A coin toss.
Prayers to your gods or goddesses for my beautiful baby.