Hank Wolgamott, who has hemophilia A, and his mother, Amanda, live in Texas. They share dramatic questions they’ve gotten about hemophilia.

Amanda: I had a teacher ask when he was starting kindergarten, was he allowed to use scissors or, like, use a pencil? And I’m like, “Yeah, he’s going to be fine with those; he takes medicine. So, he’s not gonna just bleed out if he, you know, accidentally gets a cut from scissors or something.”

What about you?

Hank: People are like, “Is he going to die from the smallest cut?” Because like one time we watched a video when they were doing physical education, health classes. It was talking about, blood and at one point it said, like, “If you don’t have clotting factors in your blood, even the smallest paper cut, it could lead you to bleed out and like, not be able to stop the bleeding.”

And everyone in my grade kind of knew vaguely about how I had hemophilia. So they were like, “Hank, is that what happens to you?” And I’m like, “No, I just I take medicine, I’m fine.” This is second grade or something, by the way.