Comments on: What Did You Do to Your Hands? https://livingwithscleroderma.com/what-did-you-do-to-your-hands/ Reflections on the Messy Complexity of Chronicity Tue, 29 May 2012 14:26:42 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.4 By: Evelyn Herwitz https://livingwithscleroderma.com/what-did-you-do-to-your-hands/#comment-88 Tue, 29 May 2012 14:26:42 +0000 http://www.livingwithscleroderma.com/?p=522#comment-88 In reply to Pat Bizzell.

Thanks, Pat. Of course, each of us, especially as women, is most aware of her own “flaws.” I know what I used to look like and what my hands felt like before this disease struck, so I’m the most acutely aware of how I’ve changed. And I also realize that I’ve been fortunate, because I have not been left with as much visible sclerosis as others, whose bodies are much more dramatically altered by scleroderma.

But you’re right, when we know and love someone, we see him or her for the person as a whole, not in terms of some artificial standard of beauty, or as part of one ethnic group or another, or as “belonging,” whatever the context.

]]> By: Pat Bizzell https://livingwithscleroderma.com/what-did-you-do-to-your-hands/#comment-87 Tue, 29 May 2012 13:46:05 +0000 http://www.livingwithscleroderma.com/?p=522#comment-87 Sadly reading your description of your disease as “disfiguring,” I realize that when I look at you, I see Evie. I don’t see scleroderma. I think usually when we know a person, we see that person. We don’t see essentially superficial physical characteristics that may be salient to a stranger. Another way I’ve realized this is when I was out in public with my adopted Korean daughters. I’d be startled by a question about whether they were my kids. Of course they are my kids! Looking at them, I saw Anna and Rachel. I did not see Asian faces that did not match my Caucasian one. Living in Israel now, Rachel has to figure out how to respond to questions–and rude comments–every day, when people think she does not “look Jewish.” But of course, she is.

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