State-of-the-art way to give her a hand
Library, 3-D printer make Victoria girl’s dream come true
Katelyn Vincik was born with a head of dark hair, bright eyes and a vivacious personality, but not a functioning left hand.
Between her mother’s research skills, however, and the expertise and tenacity of a public library and its volunteers, 5-year-old Katelyn now has a pink-and-purple hand that opens and closes and makes all sorts of things in the life of a little girl easier.
It began with a wish. Every night before bed, Katelyn and her mother, Kimberly, would pray for a new hand. (The disability is called amniotic band syndrome and occurs, in various forms, in about 1 in 1,200 to 15,000 live births.) Katelyn was, and is, on the waiting list at Shriner’s Hospital in Houston for a state-of-the-art “robo
hand.”
But the thing about waiting lists is the waiting. So Kimberly got on her computer and started searching.
“I looked for everything that could be a help to me,” said Kimberly Vincik, who lives with her husband, Casey, and their two smaller children in Victoria. Eventually, she found a group in England called eNABLE that had plans for a functioning plastic hand that could be 3-D printed. (At least 2,000 hands have been made worldwide with the e-NABLE plan.)
Buying a 3-D printer was out of the question, of course.
“Our next option was to find somebody who had one,” she said.
Similar to a Lego
This is where the Clear Lake City-County Freeman Branch Library, and its staff members Jim Johnson and Patrick Ferrell, came in.
Ferrell manages the Maker Space at the library, part of the Harris County Public Library system, which is a workshop area where patrons can use laser cutters and 3-D printers and the like. It’s the only such library space in Southeast Texas.
“It’s just another way libraries can offer new services,” Ferrell said. They see everyone from astronauts to artists to schoolchildren come in to use the equipment.
But Katelyn’s hand was different. Ferrell and his team of volunteers had never made anything like it.
The Vincik family drove the two-plus hours to Clear Lake to make sure the hand would be measured and scaled correctly.
“We had to do a lot of analyzing,” Ferrell said.
The hand is the product of old and new. Its system of pullies was invented by an Australian dentist 100 years ago, but its material is polylactic acid, “a hard, slick plastic similar to but not exactly like a Lego,” Ferrell said.
Katelyn asked for pink and purple.
“It’s not the most technically challenging thing we’ve ever done, but it was the most heartwarming,” Ferrell said.
On July 30, Ferrell drove the hand, wrapped in red, down to the Vinciks’ house, where a birthday party for Lacey, 3, and Caleb, 1, was underway. “I got to play Santa Claus,” he said.
He handed Katelyn the package. “My new hand!” she said.
“She has a smile that could power a small city,” Ferrell said.
Katelyn immediately strapped it on her arm and began picking up things.
“You get a 5-year-old to light up like that, it’s hard to top,” he said.
‘Don’t ever give up hope’
Since then, Kimberly said, Katelyn has had an easier time cutting paper and riding her bicycle.
“It makes everything in the world easier,” she said.
Katelyn started kindergarten last week, but that was overwhelming enough, so the new hand hasn’t made its school debut yet. Maybe next week.
Kimberly Vincik advises other parents faced with similar difficulties to understand that they aren’t alone.
“Others are going through the same thing,” she said. “Don’t ever give up hope. Be determined.”