Saving face: Surgery corrects vivid reminders of years of abuse

Mobley, who grew up in Texas, and his wife, Britta, were married in 1994. They now have a son, Max, 4 1/2, and a baby, 4-month-old Paxton. And as they count their blessings, Mobley wants to bless others, he says. "I know it sounds like a cliche, but I make a darned good living and with it comes a sense of social responsibility. This is a nice organization to get involved in, and we could do more if more patients knew about it. It's not an inconvenience in the big picture of a busy medical practice to stop and do some charity care.

"And these have all been nice, nice individuals who are getting their lives back on track," he says of the handful of women whose faces he's mended through the program so far. "I am one of the last steps in their recovery. It is corny, but I feel fortunate to do what I do."

In the three years he's been practicing in Utah — where he accepted a job because he wanted to work in an academic environment — he's done about two of the donated surgeries a year. It's something he knew he wanted to do even as he was training to be a facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon.

In the half-dozen women he has treated after domestic violence, he's seen definite patterns, he said. The injuries are often similar to Dale's: noses broken and twisted, some sort of irregularities on the outside. And "all of the women want to breathe normally," something that has become hard for them after being punched in the face.

In late August, he met with Dale to talk about what he'd be doing. A few days later, she checked in for a surgery that lasted several hours. Mobley cleaned out the internal, damaged structure of the nose to solve her breathing problems. And because she had a slight hook on the end of her nose, he made some subtle modifications to give it a more pleasing line, while he was at it.

The next morning, she went to his office to have the packing removed. A week later the splints came out.

By the end of the second week, most of the pain was behind her, and she was "nicely along in recovery," Mobley says, although her face was still spongy and swollen. Subtle swelling may last as long as two months in facial reconstruction, he adds.

When she told him, hesitantly, that she had been jailed, it didn't faze him. Her past, he says, was less important to him than what kind of life she planned to build for her future.

Since the surgery, she's started a new job and is doing well, she says.

One of the first things Dale noticed a few days after surgery was what was missing — her perpetual sinus headache. "And I'm breathing better, better, better," she exclaims. She likes the way it looks, too.

Sleep, she says, used to be her refuge, and she dreaded waking up. Nowadays, she says, morning brings a smile to her lips.

"It's tremendous how different it looks. It's amazing. And I feel better about my life every single day."

---

Face to Face The number to call for Face to Face is 1-800-842-4546.

E-mail: lois@desnews.com