Patients of Courage assignment

Tonight I just returned from the third leg of my current assignment for Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. Ethicon is the leading manufacturer of surgical sutures: those specialized needle and thread combinations that surgeons require.

Ethicon has commissioned me to photograph patients who are too busy with important projects to let major reconstructive surgery interfere with their remarkable work. Uday Hateem, having survived an assassination attempt in Iraq where he worked as a translator for Coalition forces, now volunteers as a translator for severely injured Iraqi children at the Shriner's Hospital in Philadelphia for reconstructive surgery.

Janet Smith is a volunteer piano accompanist for her local high school's choir in Canton, Ohio. She did not let a cancer diagnosis and multiple surgeries stop her from getting back to work ASAP.

Abigail Hardin is a 19 year old college sophomore in Tuscaloosa, Alabama who travels around the state reading the book she wrote for children about a hippopotamus who had a birthmark on his face (just like Abigail).

The photographs will be used by Ethicon at the Association of Plastic Surgeons national convention in Seattle at the end of October.