F or Kristina DiCarlo, senior year of high school was punctuated by all the typical “lasts” before graduation — in particular, her final dance performance and, soon after, the penultimate gathering of classmates: prom.

Her parents, Tom and Donna DiCarlo, wanted to do all they could to make sure these experiences were magical for their daughter. The challenge: Kristina, who lives with atopic dermatitis, a type of eczema, was plagued with flares, primarily on her feet and ankles.

“ I grew up with eczema,” Tom says, reflecting on the empathy he had for his daughter’s experience. As he recalls, the condition was often mistaken for something else, such as athlete’s foot or poor hygiene. Tom’s original diagnosis was ringworm, and the treatment he was given just made his skin worse. “It took a long time for the doctors to finally say, ‘Oh, you have this skin problem,’” he says.

“When I look back on my own experience with it and then I look at [Kristina’s] experience with it, I think it affected her more than it did me. … I had the physical problems, but I didn’t have the social stigma attached to it.”

Sharing the experience of a childhood with atopic dermatitis strengthened an already tight bond between Tom and Kristina that still thrives today. Although the condition wasn’t as well understood when Tom was growing up, and the treatments weren’t as advanced, he had strategies to manage it and was able to pass those on to his daughter.

K ristina was diagnosed with atopic dermatitis when she was around 9. The condition became especially problematic as she got serious about dancing. “She would be wearing [dance] shoes all the time and then [be in] bare feet,” Donna recalls. “So I think it started to progress the more into dance that she was.”

Kristina remembers having flares pretty consistently all during high school. Although her hands and the skin behind her knees were sometimes affected, her feet took the brunt of her breakouts, which were “big, circular, red, itchy patches all over my feet, in between my toes, on my ankles.”

T om and Donna adopted a divide-and-conquer approach to shepherding Kristina through flare-ups during her senior year. Donna largely focused on getting Kristina to doctor’s appointments and, beyond that, problem-solving. “Moms are creative. They can fix anything,” Kristina says.

Tom describes one of his primary roles as “the eczema policeman.” Well aware of how important it is to be consistent with treatment (and how forgetful or downright stubborn teenagers can be), he became the parent who was always saying to Kristina, “Put the cream on. Did you put the cream on? Put the white socks on, put this on, put that on. Do this, do that,” he says. “You have to stay on top of eczema. I was making sure that I was enforcing the regimen.”

From the start, treating Kristina’s atopic dermatitis was an exercise in trial and error. When patches started to pop up between her toes and on the backs of her knees and hands — around age 7 or 8 — Tom had a good idea of what was happening, thanks to his own experience. He and Donna first turned to over-the-counter products to help manage their daughter’s outbreaks.

But when a flare on the bottom of Kristina’s foot got infected, they took her to a specialist for the first time. The doctor confirmed she had atopic dermatitis and prescribed stronger medications than Kristina had been using.

After that, it took a long time to find products that helped her skin. Kristina remembers “trying everything” to clear up flares. The process was often frustrating: It could take weeks of using one product to discover it simply wasn’t going to do the trick. Donna says the cost of many medications exacerbated the frustration. It was hard, she said, for Kristina to know, “She could treat it … but it’s unaffordable. There’s more stress and anxiety building up over, you know, you can treat it, but why is it almost $200 to do that?”

I n the weeks leading up to prom, Kristina was as organized as a bride-to-be. In fact, Donna took her to a bridal shop to look for a dress, where her daughter found one she loved. It was perfect, except for the color, so the salesperson showed them another color online — a “white-and-gold version,” says Kristina. “And I just loved it. I was like, ‘This is it.’ And it fit and didn’t even need to be altered.”

T hough her high school days are behind her, much of what Kristina learned as a result of her parents’ love and support during the eventful end of her senior year has stayed with her. Thanks to self-care strategies — staying hydrated, getting plenty of sleep, keeping active through dance and yoga — Kristina has better control of atopic dermatitis now than she did then. Flares are rare, but when they do happen, she’s able to draw from the lessons her parents taught her about acknowledging the flare but not allowing it to bring her down.

In particular, Kristina appreciates the loving way her mom was able to respect the angst she felt when flares threatened to undermine important events. “She never made it smaller,” Kristina says. “It was like, ‘Your feelings are big toward this, so we’re going to acknowledge those feelings and how much weight it has on you, and we’ll solve it together.’ And I just think that is really important.”