THE DIARY I THOUGHT I’D NEVER SHARE
MONDAY, MARCH 31, 2008
KATIE is heavily sedated and the room is silent except for the sound of the machines keeping her alive. This is my first sight of my daughter since the police called at 6.30pm to say she’d been the victim of a ‘chemical attack’.
The last time David and I saw Katie was on Mother’s Day, a few weeks earlier. She was 24, just a normal girl, living her life. Now this. I struggle to take anything in.
Later that night, David and I are shown to a relatives’ room, with a single bed and a mattress on the floor. I lie on the mattress, fully dressed, immobile; I don’t cry, I just keep thinking ‘Oh my God’ over and over again. My mind races. Katie’s life is over — how can she exist without a face?
TUESDAY, APRIL 1
AT 6am there’s a knock on the door. My heart leaps — has she died? Instead, a nurse says that Katie wants to see us. It seems like a miracle.
She knows we’re there but can’t open her eyes. Intubated [when a tube is inserted into the trachea] and with an oxygen mask over her face, she can’t speak. She’s unrecognisable.
With a pen and some paper on a clipboard she writes: ‘Help me, I can’t breathe. Where am I? Am I dead? Am I blind? I’m sorry. I love you. Please don’t cry.’
One of the most upsetting things she writes is simply: ‘Kill me.’ (Katie would spend 45 days in hospital after the attack, undergoing a series of operations, including a number of skin grafts.)
THE FOLLOWING WEEK
THE doctor says he will take skin from Katie’s back for the major skin graft on her face. The evening before the operation she’s sitting in her chair and leans forward to get something. Her gown falls open. I go to tie it up for her and stroke the smooth, unblemished skin and think how sad that soon it will be scarred, too.
12 DAYS LATER
KATIE was put into an induced coma after the skin graft to keep her stable. Now, to wake her, the doctors reduce the drugs. She becomes very confused and tries to get out of bed. We have to help the nurses restrain her. She fights us and shouts. Clearly, she thinks she’s being attacked again. Although we know it’s a reaction to the drugs, our hearts break, seeing the terror on her face as if we are the attackers.
LATE APRIL: DAY OF THE REVEAL
THE time comes for Katie to see herself. Her psychologist says to remember it isn’t what she’ll look like eventually and recommends she doesn’t look at her whole face. But we know that’s not what Katie will do. When they give her a mirror, she puts it straight to her face and gives the most horrific scream imaginable.
MAY 2008
KATIE can’t see a way forward and is suicidal. Then something changes. Katie says that while thinking about ending her life she feels a warm rush come over her and a voice says: ‘Don’t worry, everything is going to be all right.’ She thinks it’s an angel visiting her and it gives her the courage to fight back.
JUNE 2008
KATIE has been home with us since she was discharged on May 15. Sometimes I can hear her crying in her room and I don’t know what to do. Her psychologist says we must let her cry, but as a mum I just want to comfort her.
We have to deal with our feelings, too. We massage her face three times a day, stretching the grafted skin until it turns white. David and I take turns. Sometimes, when one of us is massaging Katie, the other goes into the next room to cry. We never cry in front of her.
LATER IN JUNE
KATIE sleeps with a machine next to her bed to help her breathe. If air gets in, an alarm goes off. One night it goes off and David leaps out of bed to go to her and runs into the wall. It’s like having a baby again.
JULY 2008
SOMETIMES it’s like treading on eggshells; we can’t say anything right. I know why she’s shouting and yelling, but my heart still hurts and it feels very personal. It’s hard to see someone you love in so much turmoil.
AUGUST 2008
KATIE has been back and forth to France to a clinic that specialises in skin rehabilitation. David and I went with her initially, but then the time came for her to go on her own. How she found the courage to do that I don’t know. But she put up with the stares, the whispered comments. Her bravery never ceases to amaze me.
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From mother To Daughter: The Things I’d Tell my Child, by Katie and Diane Piper will be published by Quercus on February 22 at £14.99.