9.9.21 // Scars

This past week I had the honor to work with the incredibly talented @mrelbank as a subject for his Scars series. I'm sharing some of his work over the next several days, but please check out his page for more truly vulnerable and moving stories captured in photos and in words!

Part 1 of the words I wrote for the Scars series: I've never known a life without scars. I've never known an existence without intricate faded white lines that criss-cross my skin. From four weeks old, and my first surgery, I've found myself falling asleep to the tangy metallic smell of anesthesia more times than I can count on my nine fingers. On December 22nd, 1990, I was born with a series of anomalies in both my hands. I had a "floating thumb" on my left hand where the thumb was only connected to my hand by skin, soft tissue, and muscle. On my right hand, my thumb was frozen, locked into an unnatural position, twisted without mobility. At four weeks old, my inaugural surgery, they removed my left thumb. What came after that was a series of surgeries to creatively give me mobility and hands that could function as "normally" as possible. As a child, it was all a blur. In large part my childhood was spent in casts, going to doctor's offices, or explaining to the kids in my class why I couldn't attend their birthday parties because of the latex balloons. Somewhere in between the numerous surgeries from 4 weeks old to 8 years old, I gained more mobile thumbs, but I had also gained an anaphylactic latex allergy from the overuse of latex in surgery. Not only did I have sweeping scars on my hands, but I now had a scar inside my body, not in the form of a suture, rather in the form of an allergy. After 8 years filled with surgeries, my parent's patience to make my hands as perfect as possible was beginning to wear thin. There was always a new experimental surgery, method, technology, and we were all exhausted by the medical cycle.

What none of us had realized was that the next several years of life were merely a break before much bigger surgeries… Part 2 to follow!