TRYING TO WRITE THE WRONGS.

Hi! I am a thriller author who was working on my third book when I had my right pinky finger severed by a faulty pontoon gate design on my dominant hand last summer. After four surgeries, I have had what was left of that bone removed in a Ray Amputation down to wrist level and was left with severe nerve damage in the ring finger, and there may be further surgeries needed down the road for that yet as well. Of course, this was my dominant hand. As a writer, I wasn’t thrilled. When typing, that hand tended to roll to the side because of that missing finger, causing terrible stress on my wrist. Of course, I went to prosthetic companies and was told that even though I had two insurance policies, because of my level of loss, there wasn’t much that they could do for me, but they would be willing to “try” and design something… for around $14,000! Oh, and even more disgusting was finding out that when an insurance company says they will cover in full, what they mean is the amount that they deem to be “in full”. This meant, at best, I would still be looking at around $10,000 out of pocket to try and have a prosthetic made that may or may not work for me.

I was furious. I was sad. I felt like I stuck out in the world and hid my hand most of the time in public. But then, my dad developed a prosthetic prototype within 48 hours! (He DID work for NASA on Space Shuttle launch pads back in the day and has a brilliant engineering mind!) He just wanted his daughter to feel better about herself and to be able to help me function better on the day-to-day tasks. (Did you know that you lose up to 50% of your grip strength when you lose a pinky?) He couldn’t have known what was to come…

I began wearing my device in writers’ groups and amputee groups. People began to ask questions, wanting to know where they could get them, telling me that there wasn’t anything like this out on the market for people who just wanted so badly to feel normal, to feel whole. We went to attorneys and ran patent searches, and they were right! This design wasn’t listed anywhere and was so cost-effective to produce!

Without hesitation, we began the patenting process and began setting up production and test runs. I am thrilled to say that we are within a few months of launching our company, FixADigit, and giving people a SUPER affordable option that is fully customizable and fun and as easy to wear as sliding on a couple of rings on a finger. But that’s not even the best part….

We intend to produce these for children at no cost. Knowing what it felt like to have such a loss and how much fun I have had with being able to paint a nail on that “finger” again, I want to give that to kids too. Whether that means that we allow the patent to be given to children’s hospitals so they can use their own 3D printers to manufacture, or we keep making them for the kids ourselves, remains to be seen. All I know is that we are having a blast, I am back full speed in my writing career and even advanced my career at our local public health department!

My dad keeps saying that my loss and accident had to have been for a higher purpose, and I truly believe we have found it! Not only are we on the path to helping people like myself, but I am also actively fighting to get the pontoon industry to change their protocol and design standards on their faulty gates to save as many hands and fingers as I can. What a wild ride it’s been so far. I may have to write a book about it 🙂