Katie Couric tells Lauren Scruggs her prosthetic arm is 'cute' as model explains why she doesn't want a robotic arm following devastating propeller accident

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 16:55 EST, 20 November 2012 | UPDATED: 18:09 EST, 20 November 2012

Lauren Scruggs spoke to Katie Couric today about her horrific propeller accident and allowed the chat show host to hold her prosthetic hand.

Scruggs, 24, has made a remarkable recovery since December 3 last year when she walked into a still-spinning plane propeller and lost her left arm and eye.

The model and fashion blogger from Texas discussed her prosthetic arm in front of TV cameras today, allowing Couric to hold her fake hand and stroke the fingernails, before the host commented: 'It's cute.'

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Brave: The 24-year-old allowed Couric to stroke her prosthetic hand when she appeared on TV

Miss Scruggs added that she didn't like the robotic arm she has been fitted with, saying it 'freaked' her out but added that she would use it at home to prevent muscle atrophy.

The Dallas native's interview on Katie this afternoon is just one of several media appearances that she has made surrounding the release of her memoir Still Lolo on November 15.

Her parents and twin sister Brittany also spoke to Couric about how they have helped Lauren cope through an agonizing but inspirational recovery.

Lauren admitted in a previous interview with the Today Show that the hardest thing about the accident was loosing her hand.

Beauty: Miss Scruggs has written a memoir about her struggles to come to terms with the extent of her injuries which saw her lose her hand and left eye

Amazing: Couric held Lauren's hands together to show its lifelike quality

Support: Lauren's father, mother and twin sister Brittany sat in the audience on Tuesday afternoon

'It changes your life,' she said. 'You appreciate life a lot more, my compassion for people has strengthened, I have compassion I couldn't have had before. It was a dose of reality, and was hard to see.'

Speaking about living life with only one hand, the fashion blogger and former model said: 'It's amazing how your body just does what it needs to do - things that were hard in the beginning a lot easier now. I don't really think about them now.'

The blonde beauty is also honest in how her injured looks deeply affected her in her interview with Dateline.

'[When I saw myself], I think I just saw the reality of what had happened. I had my eye patch on, I didn’t have my hand, half my head was shaved. I was just thinking, "Wow. How life can change in an instant and how that’s not the way I have looked in the past."'

Reliving the moment: Lauren Scruggs has revealed for the first time what actually happened in the horrific accident that robbed her of left arm and eye, and changed her life in an instant

Working hard: Lauren says she is off pain medication, doing rehab every day to strengthen her muscles, and is 'feeling really well' for the first time since the accident

Lauren admits the hardest thing about the accident was loosing her hand.

'It changes your life,' she said. 'You appreciate life a lot more, my compassion for people has strengthened, I have compassion I couldn't have had before. It was a dose of reality, and was hard to see.'

Speaking about living life with only one hand, the fashion blogger and former model said: 'It's amazing how your body just does what it needs to do - things that were hard in the beginning a lot easier now. I don't really think about them now.'

The blonde beauty is also honest in how her injured looks deeply affected her in her interview with Dateline.

'[When I saw myself], I think I just saw the reality of what had happened. I had my eye patch on, I didn’t have my hand, half my head was shaved. I was just thinking, "Wow. How life can change in an instant and how that’s not the way I have looked in the past."'

Handling it: Lauren admits the hardest thing about the accident was loosing her hand, saying 'It changes your life'

Brave face: A long scar can be seen running down the left side of Lauren Scruggs's face as she talks to Dateline's Natalie Morales

Lauren has three different arms - her passive prosthetic which she can't move but looks incredibly lifelike, her workout prosthetic which she uses for boxing and other exercises and another arm that come with attachments, including a paddle-like device for swimming.

Still Lolo: A Spinning Propeller, a Horrific Accident, and a Family's Journey of Hope, by Lauren Scruggs was published on November 15

She is in rehab for up to three hours a day to practice ordinary tasks without her left hand and can now tie her shoes, put her hair up and drive - which she does with the help of her knee.

Referring to losing her hand, she said: 'Reality hit me when I got off my pain medication.

'I just wanted my hand back. I went through the process of grieving and still am today.

'My doctor told me that losing your hand is like losing someone in your family. Because it's a part of you.'

The MailOnline revealed exclusively ahead of her book launch that she screamed: ‘I am so ugly!’ in a fit of rage as she struggled to come to terms with the enormity of her horrific injuries after walking into the plane propeller.

Consumed with a 'primal, uncontrollable anger, she yelled: 'My life is ruined, no one will ever love me!'

The book also details the moment she looked at herself in the mirror naked for the first time since the accident and collapsed in a ‘storm of mourning’ after staring at the dent in her shaven skull with titanium plates in it, the scar down her face, her sagging lip, her missing left eye, her missing left hand and four cracked teeth.

The book is the first time the 24-year-old fashion blogger has spoken in depth of the moment she walked into a spinning airplane propeller in December last year - and her slow, agonizing recovery.

By January, Lauren was on her way to recovery but suddenly found she was suffering from mood swings which she had never encountered before.

Lauren writes: ‘From out of nowhere this phantom rage rushed over me. I was absolutely primal, uncontrollable.'

Lauren was eventually calmed down by relatives, but the pain still burned inside her. Earlier in January she had stood in front of a mirror naked for the first time since the accident, staring at her body for a full ten minutes.

She looks at everything including the eye which had to be removed and her missing left arm. Lauren writes: ‘From deep within me a storm of mourning brewed and broke forth.

‘I climbed into the shower and the storm hit and the rain fell all around me.

Brave: Lauren Scruggs, right, posing with her prosthetic left on display while out and about in Texas

‘Then I crumpled onto the floor of the shower and sobbed’.

The accident which changed her life happened after she and family friend Curt Richmond had gone out in a small plane to see the Christmas lights above his Dallas home.

In the dramatic 911 call placed at 8.43pm on December 3, a woman can be heard saying: ‘A girl walked into an airplane prop - I need an ambulance immediately. I think it cut her hand off.'

A male voice can also be heard moaning and crying and when asked what part of her body was hit, he says: 'We don’t know, we haven’t turned her over.’

In her own words, Lauren deals with the incident in the briefest terms. She writes: ‘I remember the sky was black; we were on the dark side of the plane. It was December 3, 2011, and after that split second, I remember absolutely nothing.'

Lauren Scruggs tweeted this picture yesterday saying: 'Doing some filming action. Long day. Fun day.'

The memoir includes chapters by Lauren’s family, including her mother Cheryl who was among the first on the scene. In her dramatic account she describes the moment when she realized something was terribly wrong.

Cheryl writes that as the paramedics were packing Lauren into the stretcher, she asked: ‘Why is my hand white?’ Lauren asked loudly through the screams. ‘I can’t see it! I can’t see it!’ Her shirt was over her hand’.

Lauren was rushed to Parkland Hospital in Dallas where doctors stabilized her condition, and allowed Cheryl and Lauren’s father Jeff in to see her for the first time.

In those early days Cheryl wrote on her blog how the only way to keep her daughter from agonizing pain was to keep her distracted but that when she tried to sleep it came ‘ferociously at times’.

Despite all that she has been though, Lauren writes in the memoir that her trauma has given her a ‘new perspective’ on the world.

She has taken a long look at her life and has realized ‘there was so much more to my life than being worried about how I looked’, she says.

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