SEASON OF ‘WONDER’
Docs bring joy to boy with ailment featured in hit film
HE LIKES Star Wars and Snapchat and hopes to get a new smartphone for Christmas — but it’s hardly the top item on his list.
What 12-year-old Jared Galicia really wants won’t come until a surgery set for Jan. 19 at Lenox Hill Hospital.
“I want two ears,” the New Jersey sixth-grader told the Daily News. “I’m waiting for the next one. I’ll feel different after.”
Galicia was born with Treacher Collins syndrome, a rare condition that affects development of the bones and tissue of the head and face.
It’s what protagonist Auggie Pullman has in “Wonder,” the best-selling novel by R.J. Palacio that inspired the recent hit movie starring Jacob Tremblay, Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson.
When Jared gets his new left ear in a few weeks to match the right one he received last year, he’ll finally be able to ditch for good the headband that holds his hearing aids in place. The devices will be anchored to his new ears instead.
“He was born with no ears, no ear canals,” Jared's doctor Thomas Romo, director of Facial Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery at Lenox, told the The News. “His canal is full of bone. It would be like if your ear was completely full of wax and you couldn’t hear.”
During a surgery in January, Dr. Romo used cartilage from Jared’s ribs to build and attach the new right ear.
“I had to go into his chest, take three ribs out and carve it by hand during the procedure,” Romo said.
Jared was so happy with the result, he couldn’t wait to show it off at the Union Street School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Hackensack, N.J., his mom Sandra Jimenez said.
“He always had long hair to cover his ears. After the first surgery, he cut his hair. His personality changed. Now, he’s acting like a big guy. He changed the way he dresses,” she said.
The grateful mom found Dr. Romo through his Manhattanbased Little Baby Face Foundation, a nonprofit that provides free surgeries to kids born with debilitating facial deformities.
Jimenez said she and Jared’s dad, who supports the family as a dishwasher, had no idea Jared carried the gene mutation until his birth at St. Mary’s General Hospital in Passaic.
“When he was born, everybody in the room was surprised. Obviously, we got scared. In that moment, you think of everything that could be wrong. All the emotion came out,” she said. “Thank God he was OK. It’s just physical. His brain was OK.”
After the left ear surgery next month, Dr. Romo hopes to schedule more procedures to fill in Jared’s cheeks and chin, he said.
“I do face lifts and nose jobs for a living, so this a pretty good way to give back to society,” he joked.
“Listen, if you have plastic surgery, and you look bad, and you’re the Cat Woman — you did that. But these kids are the epitome of innocence. They did nothing. They’re born with this process to bear, and they have to keep their egos intact as they put up with bullying,” he said. “We want to help these kids max out their potential.”
A shy kid by nature, Jared grew animated during a phone interview with The News when asked about “Wonder.”
He saw it recently with his mom and said it felt like he was watching himself on the screen.
Jimenez said the movie helped him open up to her for the first time about his own feelings of social insecurity and his desire to overcome them, she said.
“I liked it when he went to school and made friends. And then he went camping and made more friends,” Jared said of the film’s main character. “They treated him like a regular kid. I’m a regular kid.”
When he grows up, Jared wants to be a doctor, or maybe a soccer player, he said. He also plans to work at Dunkin’ Donuts as soon as he’s old enough.
“I hope that after the surgeries, he feels more integrated in the community,” Jimenez said. “But no matter what, I always tell him he’ll always be my son, and I love him just the way he is.”