The Lessons of Lindsay
A powerful and beautiful photo-essay by Matt Mendelson about a powerful and beautiful young woman from my home town named Lindsay Ess, a fashion major at Virginia Commonwealth University. Same school, even the same building where I spent a lot of time as a kid, growing up -- so the story *really* felt familiar and personal to me, even though I do not know her, and cannot imagine what it feels like to endure what she's prevailed through. The story begins at a student runway showing, where Linsday is looking on:
Lindsay, it should be noted, has no hands to clap and no feet on which to get up. She had them back in the summer of 2007, when she was tall and thin and had just graduated from VCU with a fashion merchandising degree. Then, to use her words, a blur. When she entered Henrico Doctors' Hospital that summer, the procedure to remove a small piece of inflamed intestine, a nagging complication of her Crohn's disease, was supposed to go routinely. But supposed to go routinely rarely turns out well, and there hasn't been a routine day in Lindsay's life ever since. Not since the leak, not since the sepsis, not since the organ failures, the brain seizures, and not since the coma. Definitely not the coma. Not since one day in August turned to October and then drifted on towards Christmas. Certainly not since the quadruple amputations, the cruel coda to having been so close to death all those months and then surviving. Oh, honey, you know what they're going to do, right? the nurse said. There's no routine to being bathed and fed and dressed like a child mere months after you've graduated college, and no routine to learning how to walk again at the age of twenty-five. No routine in continuing a long-distance relationship with someone who admits to having originally been smitten by your looks, or to being with your mother almost every waking hour. There's no routine for taking a fistful of pills a day--the Pentasa, the Entocort EC, the Lexapro, the Keppra, the Urosidol, the Spiranolactone, the Zolpidem, the Lyrica, not to mention the occasional shot of actual alcohol. There's no routine, no manual, for wishing you were whole again, so that just one morning of your life you could actually wake up and make it to the bathroom on your own, even if the arms and legs you now covet so are made of acrylic and not skin and bone and muscle. And, perhaps most of all, no routine for the long, slow realization that those acrylic arms and legs might not, in the end, be the answer to anything. If you're Lindsay Ess, routine pretty much stopped on August 3, 2007.The Lessons of Lindsay (story) Sports Shooter Q & A: with Matt Mendelsohn (chat with the photographer).
(Sports Shooter, via @Glennf)
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Thank you, it was a wonderful read. Really great mix of photos and story.
Thank you for posting this Xeni, this is a really great and important story that certainly echoes my own. There are very few journalists that treat the subject of disabilities without a trace of condescension, Mendelsohn is one of them. It's great to see this important story getting out there after it was killed by the Washington Post Publisher for being "depressing" and they had already filled their 'depressing' quota for the year after a story published about a dwarf had already appeared. Very short sighted indeed.
see the post article about the controversy HERE
wow! unicorn chaser please.
Lindsay is her own unicorn chaser.
WTF!!! I have Crohn's disease!!!
I may not get over this post for the rest of the week.
I am in the hospital every 6 months, the doctors are dieing to take out my rectum & my sigmoid colon (Thank god the surgeon is not.)
I am, however, in the process of trying an expensive experimental therapy that evolves infecting oneself with intestinal parasites, essentially to "confuse" the immune system.
It is said to show some efficacy for many auto immune diseases. If you are curious, the company's web site is: http://autoimmunetherapies.com/
If you have any curiosity about my journey, now made even more terrifying, you can check me out here:
http://blog.autoimmunetherapies.com/necator-americanus-superfriend/
Brilliantly written, very affecting.
fashion, maybe she can help build and design the next gen of prosthetics to have aesthetics
that would be cool
Don't want to divert too much attention from the excellent story but 2 more good links on the WaPo mess:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2009/09/15/brauchli-washington-post-swamped-with-media-calls/
http://www.slate.com/id/2228413/
Thanks to sportsshooter.com for running this excellent piece of photo-journalism.
Like the fact that the best news come from the "fake" Daily Show, I find it somewhat ironic that we have to turn to sportsshooter.com - a site for sports photographers to share tips - to publish this.
I'll be sure to continue to turn to the mainstream media though, when I want stories and pictures of a basket of puppies.
There's an excellent documentary produced by VCUTV-HD about Lindsay. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFu0-g3pqdE&feature=channel_page
Humans are incredible
Thanks to the folks at Boing Boing for posting my story about Lindsay. Her incredible strength deserves a worldwide audience and I been receiving very kind emails from people all over the world today.
The story may have been killed at another newspaper but I'm realizing that it's finding its own readership online. Sometimes things happen for a reason.
Thanks again for the link and thanks to Sarah Scott, my new friend, for pointing it out to you all.
Best,
Matt Mendelsohn
Washington, D.C.
It's a great story, Matt, and a worthy piece of photojournalism. I can't imagine how long it took to put together. Definitely passing it on!
This is a very powerful piece. I had to go lie down for a while after reading it.
My wife is an amputee, but her life seems like a Sunday picnic compared to Lindsay's. People do what they gotta do.
Matt, much respect. Amazing work.
My (deceased) father taught art in the Pollak building, and some of my earliest memories involve turpentine fumes and wet canvases there, and skipping down the halls while he taught class.
Was amazing to read this woman's incredible story, brought to life so beautifully by your writing and photography, and know that I really do know the place.
XJ
God, and the Post didn't want that? What idiots.
Donate to the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of Canada or of America, or of somewhere else, to help people like Lindsay.
Wow, Lindsay Ess is a person I would love to have in my circle of friends.
I am sorry for the pain that you endure Lindsay, but am an admirer from a far away island.
Excuse me, I think I have something in my eye.
Oh crap, that made me cry.
I get the impression that Crohns Disease is something that is either manageable and you just live with it, or it simply destroys you from the inside out. A friend on mine has it and he was off work for over a year with some pretty similar sounding complications, and he ended up having pretty much all his lower intestine removed.