Girl requests knighthood for surgeon who saved her jaw
A TEENAGER left with a “war-zone injury” after falling off her horse says the surgeon who reconstructed her jaw deserves a knighthood.
Emily Eccles, 15, slipped out of the saddle and smashed into a gatepost in August after her ride was spooked by the popping of a car exhaust near Baslow, Derbyshire.
The GCSE student was horrified when she realised there was just one centimetre of skin keeping her jaw attached to her head and remembers cradling the flesh hanging from her face.
“It was really quite horrific – like something you see in a film,” she said. “I looked down and I could see teeth and bone and said, ‘is that my jaw?’”
The injury was so severe that the consultant facial reconstructive surgeon treating her said he had only seen comparable wounds in areas of conflict where bombs are exploding.
But Ricardo Mohammed-ali managed to rebuild her face in a “miraculous” five and a half hour operation and she was back at school just a month after the accident.
Emily, who lives with her parents and brother Sam in Sheffield, said Mr Mohammed-ali is confident that in a year’s time her face will look exactly as it did before her horrendous fall.
She is so grateful for his life-saving surgery that she has written to the Queen requesting that he be knighted. She received a personal letter from her secretary saying it had been referred to the relevant body.
“We can’t thank him enough,” she said. “At first I was thinking, I don’t know what I’m going to do, I’m not going to look like me, I’m not going to have the same kind of life as I did before. Saving people’s lives and getting them back to normality definitely deserves some sort of recognition.”
Mr Mohammed-ali put Emily’s jaw back together using three titanium plates and more than 160 stitches, and managed to save all but one of her teeth.
“The lower part of Emily’s face was only attached by a piece of skin,” he said.
“It is one of the most significant injuries that I have seen in a child outside of areas of conflict.”