WORLD> Newsmaker
Injured soldier gets new face, and anonymity
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-26 09:30

"Is your husband a vain man?" the nurse asked Dea Mikeworth.

No, Dea replied. This was a day in May, 2005, and she was still reeling from seeing Darron's bruised, swollen face for the first time. His head was twice its normal size.

"That's good," she was told. "He'll have an easier time adjusting. He's never going to look the same."

Dea knew instantly what would bother Darron most: Half his vision was gone. His features were mangled. People would stare.

She knew, too, how hard that would be for Darron, an introvert who preferred the sidelines to the spotlight, a soldier who'd rather slip into a room, do his job, then slip out quietly.

"I used to like to be able to stand in the back of the crowd and not be noticed," he explains. "I like to be anonymous."

Suddenly, he was the center of attention, and often not in a good way.

Weeks after his release, Mikeworth and his family visited Ripley's Believe It or Not museum. His legs were bandaged, his burned hands in gloves. He wore sunglasses, his nose was just slits.

As he stood, motionless, a young woman apparently thought he was a wax exhibit. When he moved, she was startled. Thinking he was an actor, she blurted: "What are you supposed to be?'"

"I just looked at her and said, 'I'm a blown-up soldier.'"

Dea says they can laugh now but back then, she was filled with anger and pain, knowing how much that experience hurt her husband, who grew even more reluctant to go out.

When he did, there were more awkward moments.

Mikeworth quickly aborted a Christmas Eve shopping trip at a crowded mall when he noticed people doing double takes. He encountered strangers who'd burst into tears or try to press money into his hands.

Dea recalls one store cashier who leaned over and asked, "What happened to him? What's his name?" even though Darron was standing right there. People thought because "his face was messed up, something was wrong with him," she says.

Mikeworth was understanding, even empathetic.

"I was pretty gruesome in the beginning," he says. "I looked like I came out of some Halloween horror movie. I know that. Sometimes if I was having a bad day, I'd get mad at the situation I found myself in, but I would never get angry at the people."

At home, Dea says, her husband sometimes hid in the bedroom, even when her friends visited. He wouldn't go to their son's kindergarten, fearing Ryan's classmates would tease the boy.

If someone new was coming over, he'd ask Dea to give them a heads-up, saying: "Did you warn her kids that I look kind of funny -- just so I wouldn't scare them." She complied.

Even simple pleasures became haunting reminders.

"I can remember nights sitting on the couch watching TV looking at people," he says, "thinking they have TWO eyes. I'm never going to look like that again."

None of that seemed to faze his sons, Ryan, now 7, and Connor, 6.