We Can Rebuild Her

I have had so many joint reconstruction surgeries that the next one would be old enough to drink, although hopefully wise enough to know better.

That's not a metaphor.

[NOTE: Yes, that is an actual photo of the X-rays from several of my more complicated surgeries.]

At this point, I have an impressive collection of orthopedic hardware, scars, and X-rays that look considerably more science fiction than medical science. Both shoulders have been reconstructed. My wrists have been rebuilt. My feet have enough assorted screws, plates, pins, and other hardware that when somebody looks at the X-rays, there is usually a moment of silence followed by some version of, “Wow.”

Over the years, more than one person has called me the Bionic Woman. People of a certain age will immediately hear the sound effect.

I didn’t come up with the nickname myself, but I can’t exactly argue with the evidence. Put a few of my X-rays together, and I begin to look less like a patient and more like somebody’s engineering project.

Looking at them recently, though, another fictional character came to mind.

Frankenstein.

Or, more accurately, Frankenstein’s creature.

We Can Rebuild Her

There is something extraordinary about looking at an X-ray of your own body and realizing how much of what you are seeing wasn’t there when you were born.

Somebody designed those pieces. Somebody manufactured them. Surgeons took apart joints that no longer worked and reconstructed them with metal and other materials so that the person attached to them could keep going.

That person happens to be me.

My reconstructed joints aren’t particularly pretty. Neither are the scars. But beauty was never the point. The point was function. The point was getting another chance to use a body that had stopped cooperating.

There's something wonderfully Frankensteinian about that.

Mary Shelley’s novel was published more than 200 years ago, long before anyone could have imagined modern joint replacement. Yet the questions at the heart of her story remain surprisingly contemporary. What happens when humans discover they can remake what nature gave us? What responsibilities come with creation? What does it mean to inhabit a body that has been altered, repaired, reconstructed, or made different from what it once was?

Victor Frankenstein’s problem, of course, wasn’t simply that he created something. It was what happened afterward.

As someone who has been repeatedly reconstructed, I feel qualified to say that follow-up care matters.

Reconstruction Is Not Restoration

My collection of replacement parts has taught me something else: reconstruction is not the same as restoration.

You don’t always get to put something back exactly as it was. Sometimes that isn’t even the goal.

When something has been through trauma, deterioration, failure, or simply time, you work with what remains. You preserve what still functions. You replace what doesn’t. You adapt to circumstances that weren’t part of the original plan. Then you find out what this new version can do.

Bodies do that. People do that. Organizations and communities do it, too.

Much of what I’ve been writing about lately has come back to this idea. We can become so afraid of change that we spend enormous amounts of energy trying to preserve something simply because it is familiar. We keep doing things the way they have always been done. We mistake longevity for effectiveness and familiarity for health.

But sometimes survival requires reconstruction. Sometimes growth does, too.

That doesn’t mean we should discard everything old or assume everything new is automatically better. It means we have to be willing to look at what is actually working, what isn’t, and what might be possible if we weren’t so afraid to change the structure.

What could we accomplish if we stopped being afraid?

My X-rays provide a rather dramatic example. Nobody looked at those joints and said, “Well, this is how they’ve always been, so we’d better leave them alone.”

Thank goodness.

And This Is Where Frankenstein Comes In

This October, several parts of my life collide in a way that is almost too perfect.

I serve on the board of the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh and chair its Development Committee. On October 24 and 25, the Bach Choir is bringing Frankenstein back to Row House Hollywood in Dormont with The Creation: When Man Plays God.

The classic 1931 Frankenstein film starring Boris Karloff will be accompanied by a live R&B soundtrack. The Saturday performance begins at 7:30 p.m., with a Sunday matinee at 4 p.m. 

Classic horror, film, live music, science fiction, and choral performance occupy the same laboratory.

In other words, if there were ever a Bach Choir performance specifically designed for a woman who has apparently earned the Bionic Woman designation the hard way, this may be it.

You can purchase Frankenstein tickets through the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh. Better yet, if you want to join us for the rest of Thomas W. Douglas’s final season with the Bach Choir, purchase a season subscription here. The season continues in December with The Beginning Sunrise and concludes in May with Nancy Galbraith’s Requiem. 

An informal reception will also follow the Saturday evening Frankenstein performance, and costumes are encouraged. I am planning something appropriately dramatic and very much in keeping with the horror and science-fiction theme. Those who remember the year I dressed as Miley Cyrus at the VMAs know that I am capable of committing to a bit. (And, yes, I did have beautiful hands.)

Apparently I’m Having a Theme This Fall

And because reconstructed bodies and nineteenth-century horror aren't enough for one autumn, I am going to follow Frankenstein with Jack the Ripper.

On November 9, I’ll be at Nixon United Methodist Church in Butler presenting You Don’t Know Jack, an hour-long talk about the Whitechapel murders and a case I have been studying since the mid-1990s.

The date is not accidental.

November 9, 1888, was the day Mary Jane Kelly was murdered at 13 Miller’s Court. She is generally regarded as the final victim among the five women most commonly associated with Jack the Ripper. My presentation will cover the murders, the investigation, what we actually know, what has become legend, and, in particular, Mary Jane Kelly and the questions that have kept people studying this case for nearly 140 years.

Dinner begins at 6 p.m., with the presentation at approximately 6:30 p.m.

So apparently my fall calendar goes from Frankenstein’s creature on October 24 and 25 to Jack the Ripper on November 9.

I did warn everyone that spooky season had arrived.

It’s Alive

Frankenstein has endured for more than two centuries because, beneath the monsters, laboratories, lightning, and horror, it's a story about creation and responsibility. The Ripper case has endured for very different reasons, but it too demonstrates something about our fascination with what frightens us, what we don’t understand, and the stories we construct around both.

Maybe that is part of why I have spent so much of my life interested in stories like these.

The frightening thing is not always the monster.

Sometimes it is change. Sometimes it is uncertainty. Sometimes it is looking at something familiar and admitting that it no longer works. Sometimes it is confronting something we cannot neatly explain.

And sometimes the thing that initially looks frightening turns out to be the thing that gives us another chance.

I can look at my own X-rays and see a body that has been taken apart and reconstructed over and over again. There are scars. There are missing pieces. There is an almost comical amount of metal.

But I am still here.

More importantly, I am still doing things. I’m climbing onto rooftops, traveling, working, writing, raising money, showing up for the organizations and people I care about, dressing up for Frankenstein, and apparently spending the anniversary of Mary Jane Kelly’s murder talking about Jack the Ripper in Butler.

That seems like a pretty good argument for reconstruction.

So, having apparently earned the Bionic Woman designation the hard way, I invite you to join me for a little of my particular brand of spooky season.

Come see Frankenstein with the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh on October 24 or 25. Come in costume. Stay afterward and meet the choir. Then, if you haven’t had enough of me or nineteenth-century horror, come see me in Butler on November 9 for You Don’t Know Jack.

And if you happen to hear a strange metallic clanking at either event, don’t panic.

That’s probably just me.