I have a rare birth defect – here’s the symptom that doctors used to diagnose it

A 19-year-old woman born with a rare medical condition that caused one of her arms to swell up has boldly hit back at haters who mock her ‘Hulk’ limb and tell her she should get it ‘amputated’ – while opening up about the seemingly-innocent symptom that led to her diagnosis as a child. 

Olivia Klopchin, a TikTok star from Springfield, Vermont, left her followers stunned with a recent video in which she opened up about how doctors discovered that she was suffering from a condition called vascular malformation – an abnormal development of blood vessels that can cause discoloration or protrusions in the affected region.

In Olivia’s case, the condition caused her arm and hand to swell to an abnormally large size. 

However long before her arm began to expand, the influencer says doctors were alerted to her condition after her family spotted a ‘small bruise on her arm’ when she was born. 

A 19-year-old born with a  birth defect that caused her arm to swell to an abnormal size has left the internet stunned after revealing the innocent symptom that led to her diagnosis

Olivia Klopchin, from Vermont, has racked up half a million TikTok followers by posting tongue-in-cheek videos about her vascular malformation, which caused one arm to swell 

In a recent video, the influencer stunned her followers when she revealed that her condition began as a ‘small bruise’ on her arm, which her parents noticed when she was a baby 

Soon after, doctors diagnosed her with vascular malformation – an abnormal development of blood vessels that can cause discoloration or protrusions in the affected region

The information left her TikTok followers stunned – with many questioning how a small bruise turned into such serious swelling. 

‘I’ve definitely had a lot of interesting reactions to my arm on the internet,’ Olivia – who has half a million followers on the video-sharing app – said of her online fame. 

‘Some people are so awesome about it and tell me how beautiful I am and how much they love my confidence.’

However, the teen admits that she also faces a slew of cruel comments from trolls who have compared her arm to the Marvel monster The Hulk – and question why she hasn’t had her limb ‘amputated’. 

‘Then there’s 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,’ she explained. 

Still, Olivia says she refuses to be fazed by the negativity she faces – and instead rises above the trolling by proudly showing off her unique limb in videos that regularly garner hundreds of thousands of views. 

One such video saw the Vermont native opening up about the ‘small bruise’ that first alerted doctors to her birth defect, which causes painful blood clots to form in her arm. 

Standing in front of the camera with the words: ‘Being born with a small bruise on my arm,’ Olivia jokingly plays a voiceover that says: ‘How bad can it possibly be?’ before doing a dramatic reveal of her swollen limb. 

Olivia admits that she faces a slew of cruel comments from trolls as a result of her condition – but she refuses to let the hatred bring her down 

‘Some people are so awesome about it and tell me how beautiful I am and how much they love my confidence,’ she said

‘Then there’s 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,’ she added

Viewers of the clip were quick to voice their shock that a ‘small bruise’ could result in such severe swelling, with one person writing in the comments: ‘That ain’t no bruise.’

Another chimed in: ‘My jaw dropped,’ while a third simply said: ‘No wayyyyy.’

Meanwhile several others began joking about her arm’s similarity to The Hulk, with one writing: ‘Do you at least have hulk like superpowers in that arm?’ 

The mocking comments are by no means the worst that Olivia has had to deal with over the years, with the influencer revealing in a previous video that she’s regularly asked why she hasn’t chosen to ‘amputate’ her limb. 

However, rather than allow the haters to bring her down, the teenager says she’d rather educate them about her condition – which she has learned to embrace over the years. 

‘I never had a rough time with it growing up,’ she explained. ‘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.’

Olivia has racked up more than half a million followers on TikTok by sharing funny videos about her condition – and the trolling comments she receives

Her arm has gotten a lot of ‘interesting reactions’ online

Olivia says that the worst aspect of her condition is not the appearance of her arm, but rather the painful blood clots she suffers as a result of her vascular malformation. 

‘With vascular malformations, there is pain because we do get blood clots and blood clots 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,’ she said. 

‘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.’