As a teen, Tom figured out that stress was a key trigger for him. “If there’s any time that’s stressful in life, it’s probably being a teenager,” he says. “I think those stress triggers actually exacerbated [Kristina’s] condition.” Tom encouraged her to find ways to stay calm and, if possible, let things “roll off [her] back.”

Today, Kristina often draws on her dad’s wisdom. She’s recognized “that ability to use your body to tell you what’s going on internally. … It’s a helpful road map that I have on my body.”

One of Kristina’s worst atopic dermatitis flares erupted just in time for her senior dance recital, when she had “this crazy breakout on the bottom of my foot.” The flare was so bad that “All of the skin was gone. It was just completely raw. I couldn’t really walk on it,” she says. “I wasn’t supposed to dance, but I refused not to dance. I would wear a medical shoe and dance in it, which is just crazy.”

In time, though, the flare “got really bad, to the point where I started to get blood poisoning lines … coming off my leg, and I had to be taken right to the podiatrist.” Donna got her to the doctor just in time. They told Kristina that if the blood poisoning had crept even a little bit higher up her legs, she would have had to head to the emergency room.

To complete the outfit, Kristina found sparkly metallic sandals with heels to match the top of the dress. “Prom was the big event of the year,” Donna recalls. “She had the date she wanted to have, the dress she wanted to have, the shoes that she wanted to have.”

A week before the big day, a flare “turned [Kristina’s] beautiful little toes into these unfortunate-looking sausages,” says Donna. “Everybody’s going for pedicures. … She didn’t want to do that. So she skipped some of those moments.” Determined not to let atopic dermatitis ruin prom night for her daughter, Donna made an appointment with the podiatrist, who treated Kristina's foot for an infection. As a result, not only did Kristina have visible eczema patches on her feet and ankles, she was sporting a bulky bandage on one foot.

Mother and daughter knew they’d have to be smart about managing the flare for prom. It was a matter of balancing “wanting to look good and … feel beautiful at prom with managing the painful patches without making them worse,” Kristina says. “You can’t jeopardize your eczema and the pain and what your skin is telling you for … the sake of wearing something pretty.”

The solution was a combination of skin-colored bandages attached to the inside surfaces of the sandals — so the shoes wouldn’t scratch Kristina’s tender feet — and the strategic application of stage makeup, which Kristina had tons of, thanks to her years of musical performances in high school.

Donna remembers sending Kristina off to the prom with some simple advice. “I told Kristina, ‘Just go and have a great time. Go have fun. We did everything we can. Don’t think about your feet. No one else is going to look at them or notice them, except they’ll see your shoes. … Just have a great time with your friends.’”

The advice worked. For Kristina, “Prom was great. It was super fun,” she recalls. “And I didn’t think about having eczema once all night. I just existed, and it went out of my mind the second I got there.”

Tom and Donna could not be prouder of Kristina, who’s now 26 and living on her own, working as a professional performer and art teacher. They still hang out when Kristina can break free from her busy life. And while atopic dermatitis is hardly the demon it once was in their family dynamics, the close bond the experience created while Kristina was growing up holds strong.