Susie’s solution

Susie McColgan fell down a flight and a half of stairs in April 2019.

“It was like falling down an elevator shaft,” the Saginaw-based artist recalls. She could barely breathe or move. She had fractured her pelvis in three places, several ribs on the right side, and her elbow. She was bleeding everywhere. And she had shattered her right hand — her painting hand.

McColgan, who earned a BFA from the U-M Penny Stamps School of Art & Design in 1981, had been an artist most of her life, since she began drawing in elementary school. She was an art director for 10 years and did graphic design, but throughout her career she always returned to portraiture.

After her fall, McColgan had several surgeries and needed to relearn to walk, but her hand was on her mind. Some of her artwork that was most meaningful to her had been done for a bigger purpose: paintings that were auctioned off to support U-M Health C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and some that were hung in hospitals at U-M and in Saginaw. She promised herself that if she regained the ability to paint again, she would use her talents to promote art and healing.

By mid-summer, it was clear that her hand was not getting better. The surgeon who had initially saved her hand did so by placing the tendons that connect her thumb to her wrist on the opposite side of the thumb from where they naturally sit. McColgan didn’t even have an opposable thumb, much less the ability to paint. And she couldn’t find a surgeon to help her.

“You feel like you’re in a black hole,” she says. “My whole life has been my art, my portraiture.” 

Through her physical therapist, McColgan was connected to Kevin Chi Chung, M.D. (Fellowship 1994), professor of surgery. Chung gave McColgan the visionary treatment she had been seeking. He explained to McColgan that, depending on what he found when he opened up her hand, he might have to do exploratory surgery and create “Susie’s solution,” a custom procedure designed to fit her unique situation.

In September 2019, Chung performed that surgery successfully. He was able to move the tendons to the front of the thumb where they belonged. Chung attributes part of McColgan’s success to good physical therapy and her own hard work and patience. After surgery, McColgan’s thumb was working brilliantly, but she suffered a setback in spring of 2023.

“Susie’s solution needs a stronger solution,” she recalls Chung telling her. “I took a piece of tendon, looped it around to create something like a sling, and stabilized it with a tiny metal anchor to the bone,” Chung says.

To show her gratitude for Chung, McColgan painted his portrait earlier this year and presented it to him at his office.

Chung appreciates McColgan’s generosity in sharing her artistic gifts with him. “These gestures are what motivate us to get up every day and go make a difference,” he says.

McColgan hopes anyone in a similar position to hers will never give up. “When you’re in so much pain, it’s almost disabling emotionally, and it makes you want to give up. But you have to keep going.”