When I was in school I did a series of portraits of women going through cancer just showing
their different strengths going through such a grueling process.
For me it was never a dream to own a studio and just sculpt all the time.
So finding a job where I could help people and do something that makes their lives better
while working with my hands and enjoying my craft, I feel very lucky.
My name is Kaylee Dougherty I work at Boston Ocular Prosthetics.
I service people who have had a loss or who have been born without something and try to
make them whole again, you know give them back what they’ve lost.
So we make artificial eyes for people who have either blindness or are missing an eye.
We also make facial prosthetics for someone who’s missing an ear or nose you know we
hand sculpt, paint, fabricate, all of these individually custom for each person.
We start with taking an impression of the patient so if you’ve ever been to the dentist
sort of a similar process.
This one was from skin cancer he had developed so his ear had to be removed.
So I’m just kind of roughing in where I want the ear to sit,
sort of roughly the size I want it to be,
and then I’ll start playing with more of the detail of the forms and how things feed
and roll into one another.
You want it to accompany the companion ear but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a
perfect mirror image,
and if it was a perfect mirror image on the other side it would probably look stranger
than one that is slightly different.
I think that’s one of the reasons why this has to be done by hand because no one is completely
symmetrical,
so learning how to decide what looks right I think is the hardest part when getting into
a field like this.
Once you put them into the silicone and you pull something out of the mold that’s soft
and flexible and flesh toned,
people will go from it not looking quite right to all of a sudden looking much more like
them.
The big difference between doing an ear and an eye is when you’re looking at someone
and talking with someone you’re looking into their eyes.
You notice little things about the structures and the colors and the arrangements when you’re
getting really up close,
and I’ll continue making tweaks until it looks as consistent with the other eye as
possible.
So right now this would be painting the iris, doing very fine layers of color.
You’re just building it up to give an illusion of depth.
If someone notices the work that I do then I’m not doing my job right.
I mean even some doctors can’t tell.
We have many patients who come in here that say they go into the eye doctor and the doctor
comes in and tries to shine a light or tries to dilate that pupil.
What people don’t realize is there are functions to these as well.
For someone with an ear it helps with hearing because it helps makes sure that the sound
directs properly.
With the artificial eyes obviously I can’t restore someone’s vision, but I can make
sure that there’s comfort there’s movement, that things feel right to them.
For each patient as they grow and as they age, as they change as things happen to them,
adjustments are needed and new ones are made over the years, so we do tend to get to know
people very well.
You know what I was thinking driving up here was I’ve had a prosthesis for 53 years.
It feels okay, I mean it does feel a little foreign object-y right now but not in an uncomfortable
way.
I’ve been watching as you were talking earlier and it’s not seated properly,
so we’ll see if we can just tweak the shape and see how that looks and then I will let you see before I’m done.
Lots of people are so excited, especially for patients who have had a trauma.
They’ve been through a really long road of bad news and pain,
so by the time they get here they kind of feel like they’re finally getting put back
together and there can be, for some patients, a very overwhelming sense of closure.
I’ll let you see it.
It’s still settling a little bit.
Yeah, that’s better.
You’re excited for them, for them to have what they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
And to have that be as much apart of them as if it was what they were born with.