Healing Hands

November 13, 2013.

Kathryn: Fuck. That hat. My dad bought it for me for my birthday. The first birthday after everything happened. It was sparkly. I was bald. I loved it -- wore it every minute. Now seeing it makes me sick. I didn't realize how profoundly ill I felt during that time. With little organ function I was so filled with fluid. I couldn't breathe, my body hurt to its core.

November 13, 2013.

Kathryn: Brian is telling me something important. He saved my life. He made everything I am and have possible. He held those black hands like he'd been holding them forever. Not one flinch in 5 years.

November 13, 2013.

Kathryn: When I see this I think of the man who saw me when I had my amputations and my hands were in casts. I was wearing my wig. I looked like a "regular" girl. He asked Brian about "the girl with the hideous black hands" about "what ever happened to her." He said that my hands were "the stuff of nightmares", "like a monster". He asked if I was "dirty" and if that's how it happened. I can never unhear that, unknow how disgusting I was to him.

November 20, 2013.

Kathryn: I think of my dad. How he held on to hope that the black would fall away and the structure of my hands would still be underneath. That pinky fell off while I was doing dishes. I put it in a baggy and finished the dishes. How much I must have been through already that part of my body coming off was just an interruption of my chores.

February 5, 2014.

Kathryn: Pretty girl trying to hide her gross new body. Look as much like you did before it all happened. If you look the same, it never happened. You can erase it. You can go back to work. But work won't want you. Your hands are too gross. You don't know that yet.

February 5, 2014.

Kathryn: Pain. I never showed it so to see it is shocking. [It reminds me of when] they were adjusting a brace after "turning Tuesday." I can feel it now. Is that what people with bone cancer feel? Bone pain is vile.

February 5, 2014.

Kathryn: Gloves. Gloves. Gloves. Nobody could touch me without them. I couldn't touch my child -- I was a danger and everything was a danger to me.

March 3, 2014.

Kathryn: I like her. She isn't hiding. Who was the wig for? Me? The world? My family? I love her.

Michaele: After the first surgery -- almost complete amputation of her thumb.

May 12, 2014.

Kathryn: So lovely. I see this with my before mind. Oh, she'd get a good role! She's thin and perfect and pretty. People will like her. Haha -- wait til ya see under the wig and cast!

November 18, 2014. The Fixator.

Kathryn: Praying, hoping for a usable thumb. The pain of turning the device was excruciating. We did it weekly at the office on Tuesdays. Jenny would come to my house after because I needed to take pain meds and I didn't want to be with [my daughter] alone on medication. I went alone to every appointment.

November. 18, 2014.

Michaele: Making a splint to protect the fixator.

The Fixator: to stimulate bone growth in the hopes that Kathryn would be able to have a functional thumb. She had just come from having the device implanted -- she was in a great deal of pain.

November. 18, 2014.

Feb. 23, 2015.

Michaele: Kathryn's surgeon is marking the area -- the fixator will be removed today.

March 9, 2015.

Kathryn: The thumb. It didn't move like the doctor said it would. So what good was all that pain?

July 14, 2015.

Michaele: And another pre-op exam to fix her fingers and thumb. It's the first time I saw her gesture with her hands.

July 14, 2015.

Kathryn: My favorite photo. We laughed a lot that day. Things started to turn around after this. I felt like the worst was over and a certain comfort with me had begun. I think this is beautiful.