Dianelis Llera, a young Cuban with a presence on TikTok, posted yesterday a nearly five-minute video in which she answers questions from her followers about the benign angioma she has on her face, half of her tongue, and half of her throat since childhood, turning her story into a lesson on self-esteem and acceptance.
Since she was little, her mother took her to the Oncological Hospital of Havana to treat the vascular lesion.
The treatment consisted of interferon injections administered rotatively in both arms and thighs, with side effects that impacted her childhood.
"With the treatment, my hair started falling out, I began to faint everywhere, I lost hair all the way up to here, it seemed like I had another illness," Dianelis recounts in the video.
The young girl learned to inject herself independently at the age of eight or nine, something she describes with ease but that reflects the harshness of that process.
It was she herself who, as a child, made the decision to stop: "Mom, I don’t want to go to the doctor anymore because what I’m doing is suffering."
The final straw was seeing other children in worse conditions in the oncology hospital and not noticing any improvement in their own situation.
Dianelis explains that the angioma itself never made her feel self-conscious, but the treatment did make her feel unwell, causing her hair to fall out and leaving her body weak.
"I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever in my life had a complex about myself, never, ever, ever, ever," she asserts emphatically in the video.
Not even the bullying—referred to as "chucho" in Cuba—that she experienced as a child in school was able to shake her confidence.
"I arrive at a place and no one is better than me; I believe I’m the most beautiful one there, even if others think differently," she says.
He also ruled out surgery, claiming that the angioma does not interfere with any aspect of his life: neither in his romantic relationships nor in his daily routine.
"Now, what am I going to be doing in an operating room getting something removed that is a blood mole?" she points out, adding that the procedure involves risks she is not willing to take.
Her main message is directly aimed at those who live with similar conditions: "That's the best thing a woman and a person can have: feeling that you are pretty, that you are beautiful, that you are precious, loving yourself just as you are, and not letting anyone lower your self-esteem at all."
The video generated a wave of comments from followers who also have angiomas or have had them, including individuals who have experienced them in their ovaries, highlighting the impact and the sense of identification that their story evokes.
The bullying among Cuban youth is a documented phenomenon both inside and outside the island, with recent studies confirming its impact on adolescents' self-esteem.
Dianelis closed her message with a phrase that encapsulates her entire philosophy: “Whoever is meant to love me must love me as I am, with my flaws and my virtues.”
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