Kind words help bolster confidence
Christine Brown has always avoided mirrors, just having quick glances to make sure her hair was right.
Despite undergoing a 16-hour face reconstruction more than two months ago, she still struggles with the way she looks.
But she is getting there, and the kindness of strangers is helping.
In August, surgeons lifted the right side of her face as it had sagged most of her life, and her eye socket was recontoured.
Brown, from Invercargill, has endured setbacks in her recovery, with facial pain and numbness still affecting her and kidney failure a month ago leaving her very ill for a short time.
Now she thinks she is ‘‘98 per cent’’.
She has returned to her 15-houra-week office job and, for the first time in her life, is receiving compliments from strangers and learning to look at herself in the mirror.
Brown says she still needs reassurance from her husband that the surgery on her face has made her look better.
‘‘Getting positive comments are lovely but sometimes it’s hard because all my life I have had nothing but negative comments [from strangers],’’ she said.
‘‘I accept it graciously but I go home and I ask ‘do I really look better’? My husband reassures me.
‘‘To be honest I still have a hard time looking in the mirror, which has always been the case. I am getting used to it slowly ... when they lift up the mouth it will be real good.’’
Surgeons will lift the side of her mouth in another surgery, which she hopes will be before Christmas. They will also fix a hole in her ear drum and lift her eye – ‘‘then it’s all done’’.
People had been telling her she was brave, but she did not see it that way.
‘‘I don’t think I am brave. It was something I needed to do for me, but I know it’s helped a lot of people.
‘‘A lovely lady came up to me the other day and said she gave me the courage to speak to a stranger ... and I was the first stranger she spoke to.’’
She declined to be photographed again until after the final surgery.
‘‘That way we will see the whole finished product.’’
Brown was born with neurofibromatosis, which causes multiple tumours to grow on nerves in her body, including her face.
When aged 7, a massive tumour dragging her face down was operated on for the first time, and she had undergone 18 operations over the years.
The first 17 surgeries were unsuccessful in aligning her face, but the 18th operation, in August, was different because bone was cut from her leg and moulded into a cheekbone that was screwed into her face using plates.
The cheekbone has given her face support and structure.