From the breast to the brain, and the lung to the prostate, it’s hard to think of a body part that does not have a charity dedicated to promoting its own medical interests. A surprising exception is the face. Cosmetics companies may seduce us into spending small fortunes on making the best of our features, but this counts for little if your face is disfigured by disease or an accident, damaged by a violent attack, or distorted by unequal growth of bones. The shape of the jaw or nose can be critical to emotional stability, as Sue Elphick, a 33-year-old nurse, discovered as a child. “I always felt I was an ugly duckling. My bones seemed to grow at different rates. My lower jaw and chin lengthened and curled up until I was able to touch my nose with the tip of my chin. My cheek bones flattened, and soon my face looked like a crescent moon.
Jun
We value beauty so highly that living with disfigured features can be unbearable. Angela Neustatter talks to two people about how they cope – and about how a new charity is tackling the prejudice. The left-hand side of Henry de Lotbiniere’s face is a wreck. What was once an angular cheek meeting chiselled jaw, is now concave. There is a protuberant flesh covered lump in the place where his eye used to be. When he lifts the dark forelock of hair which hangs low over his brow you see a crater-like hole where half his forehead has been removed.
Jun
For more than a year, Antonia Danby draped her hair over her right eye. She was hiding a lumpy cartilage-like growth, which was rapidly expanding from her eyebrow downwards to create a shelf-like overhang. It also threatened the sight in her right eye. When I meet her, she is holding a portrait painted several months before the operation which eventually removed her growth. It was painted by Mark Gilbert, a Glasgow artist, who is the Saving Faces artist-in-residence at St Bartholomew’s and the Royal London facial surgery unit.
Apr
Professor Hutchison features in the Student BMJ in Rebuilding people’s faces and lives.
Read the full article here
Jan
Professor Hutchison’s patients, Henry de Lotbinière and Henry Ekpe, feature in The Telegraph.
Read full article here.