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Injured soldier gets new face, and anonymity
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-26 09:30 Doctors partially elevated the flap before pivoting it clockwise down to his nose. It remained attached so it looked like an elephant trunk for a time while they made sure there was proper blood flow. Then they shaped and thinned it. The lower left side of his nose that had been worked on at Brooke was a bulbous mass (Mikeworth's boys dubbed it his "bubble gum" nose). Surgeons removed thick cartilage that made it hard to breathe, inserted new cartilage and thinned it out. For his left eye, they created a new lower dam-like eyelid (he lost his in the blast), using forehead skin and a piece of tissue from the roof of Mikeworth's mouth. It's strong enough to hold a prosthetic eye, which will come later. "It's amazing what they can do," Mikeworth says. "They just take parts of you from everywhere and rearrange them." For his mouth, they removed scarred skin on his upper lip that had exposed his teeth and created a snarl -- Dea jokingly called it his Elvis snarl. A skin graft made the lip full again. Doctors still plan a tattooed line to mask the scars and make the lip look more balanced. "Getting him to look like he did before is totally unrealistic," says Dr. Christopher Crisera, his chief surgeon. "My goal is to try and get them to a point where they're happy the way they look." He already is. Each time Mikeworth returned from a major surgery, friends noticed progress. "I was seeing it, too," he says. "It kept improving and I was happy and smiling about it the whole time." Gustafson, his former caseworker, says Mikeworth no longer speaks in a monotone, staring at the floor. He no longer has to be tracked down in the smoke shack; Gustafson says he initiates visits, and has a lot more to say. "He's more motivated, excited about life, excited about who he is," she says. "He walks around with his head up. Now he's feeling so much better about himself." When she recently asked to see the progress of his eye, he lifted his sunglasses. "He was just so proud," she says. "I just popped him in the chest and said, 'I've got to hug you. We did it.' It would be easy to take no for answer and say, `I'll disabled for the rest of my life.'" Last summer, Darron returned home to escort his sister, Amanda, down the aisle at her wedding. He started walking, then noticed he still was wearing sunglasses. He yanked them off. His reason: "I just wanted to be me." Sgt. Mikeworth hopes to join an Army unit by summer. He's on medical hold while he looks for a suitable slot where the Army can use him. He's thinking about military intelligence or becoming an instructor. "I don't want to be put on a shelf or a back burner, or left in a corner anywhere," he says. "If they give me half an opportunity, I can demonstrate I can do the job." Gustafson understands. "Will he be 70 in some VA home talking about this war?" she asks. "He's not that type. He's not someone denying this has happened to him. He's not out for revenge. He just wants to be a soldier. So many want to go back to the war for revenge. He just wants to do his job." Still, some scars will never disappear. "It's not something 20 years from now he's going to pull out of the box and show his kids," Dea says. "It has completely changed our lives." At school, she says, the boys are the sons of the guy who got hurt. Among friends, she's the wife of the injured soldier. "Wherever we move, whatever unit he's in," she says, "there's still that little tag on you that identifies you." But Dea is elated to see Darron's transformation. They no longer limit family outings to dark movie theaters. He goes on errands alone and last year attended a parent-teacher conference -- an unimaginable thought, not long ago. "I used to be afraid to go pick up the kids at the bus stop because I was afraid I looked like a monster," he says. "Now I pop on my sunglasses and just walk down the street and unless somebody walks up and gets into my face and starts talking to me, they have no clue. "It is," he says, "a pretty good feeling."
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