One morning she came home from Dr. Patel’s office. The pain in her elbow and the area just above it was terrible. She pulled out the pain pills to take two. One pill didn’t seem to have any effect any more. She was becoming addicted. The bottle was almost full. She stared at the bottle and considered dumping the whole bottle into her hand and taking them. Her right hand was worse than useless. Death would end the pain and misery. She realized that she could not even dump the bottle into her hand.  She considered dumping the content of the bottle down her throat. Something stopped her. She remembered a book she read while in high school by Charles Stanley’s daughter. She lost her leg in a motorcycle accident and during her recovery took up skiing. She became a world class down hill racing skier. One of her best friends and fiercest competitor was a young woman named Karen who had a serious congenital leg deformity. Her parents forbid her having the deformed and useless portion of the limb removed by surgery, a procedure that would have given her a more usable residual limb. Her parents said God wanted her that way. She became distraught and depressed and finally committed suicide. Karen remembered how she felt so bad that this girl’s life had been sacrificed. At the time she thought it was so sad the other Karen had not waited till she was twenty one and had the surgery. There was something special about her, possibly the name resulted in some emotional connection.

Author’s note: The book mentioned above really exists. I am not sure of the name of the girl who died, it may not be Karen.

Karen had wondered a thousand times in the previous six months, “Why me?” One thing she was sure of, it was not God that did this, it was evil and hateful men. God didn’t want her this way and she also knew he certainly didn’t want her dead. She remembered the verse from the bible, “If your right arm offends you, cut it off.” What a terrible thought. And yet she had just considered taking her life like her namesake because of her arm. There was no doubt that her right arm offended her. What if she were to become depressed and carry out this act? Her mind raced. There was no way she could emotionally, mentally or even physically cut off her own arm. The pain would be terrible. She had cut raw steaks. It was tough to cut one with even a sharp knife and using her right hand. And the bone would be even more difficult. She remembered the hiker who cut his trapped arm off to free himself. He cut through the elbow joint to avoid having to cut the bone. Her elbow was a metal joint. It would not yield in the way a live elbow would. She shuddered that her mind was even looking at the ways to take this drastic action. She wondered if she was loosing her mind. If she could consider cutting off her arm what else could she contemplate? And even if she could cut it off, how would she be able to stop the bleeding. If she couldn’t she would bleed to death. She vowed that she would not risk her life. She would not follow the other Karen. It was as though the other Karen were speaking to her and telling her to live. She would not waste the other Karen’s life by wasting her own.  The other Karen’s life and death would be for something.  She would live and make some difference for someone because Karen had in a way been there for her.  There had to be a solution. After some time she decided there had to be a better way. Something had to come along to fix her arm.