Diary of a mother’s anguish
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.) 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.