On the 8th of June 2002, I had a horse road traffic accident and sustained a traumatic brain injury. I had multiple fractures to the base of my skull, subarachnoid haemorrhaging and severe brain oedema.
I was in a coma for 22 days and my chances of survival were minimal. They said if I ever woke up again, I’d probably never walk, talk, read, write, eat ‘normally’; my quality of life would be poor because most survivors from that level of trauma are left in a vegetative state.
However, when I awoke, I had all my faculties. I returned to school that October, sat my exams a couple of years later and I went on to Trinity College Dublin to complete a degree in Primary school teaching. I learned to drive, I had a baby (she is now nine), I got married, I bought a house and I managed to secure a permanent teaching job, which I love. However, despite all of these fantastic milestones being reached, which once seemed impossible, I am left with the reminder of my horrific trauma in the form of my facial paralysis.
I had to wait nearly two years for the medical team I was in the care of in the south of Ireland to decide that my facial paralysis was permanent, and I had no movement apart from miniscule periocular and perioral axons firing every now and then. My mother and father made the decision to get a second opinion and we travelled to mainland UK in 2004 to get opinions on our next step in my facial paralysis recovery. I met with a surgeon in Harley Street and a surgeon in Leeds, and as my mother is from Huddersfield, close to Leeds, we stayed with family. In May 2004, I went for the first of a two-part operation where the surgeon removed the right sural nerve from my right calf and he transferred this from the functioning right hand side of my face to the paralysed side under my nose. I had to wait until October 2004 to go back for the second surgery. He then transferred part of the left pectoralis minor into my paralysed left side of my face and he attached the nerve fibres from the sural nerve transplant into the muscle.
I returned to Ireland and unfortunately it seemed that the operation did not work, and the muscle transplant moved out of place and became a huge amount of muscle mass and scar tissue. I was 17 at the time and so self-conscious. I hated the way I looked. I became the target of ridicule, speculation, pointing, jeering and sniggering.
I returned in April 2007 to get the muscle transplant readjusted into the correct position, but I got a horrendous infection, which undid all the stitches, which popped out through my cheek and a huge abscess formed in my cheek.
Over the next nine years I was treated horribly by strangers. This included my time in college. I was taunted and made to feel like a monster. It wasn’t until I started to teach that I realised that I didn’t have to pretend to be someone that I wasn’t. I found out that honesty is the best policy with children. I would tell them what happened to my face in a circle-time setting and I would welcome their questions. Once I told them the story though, they never asked any questions, they just accepted me.
I met my now husband then and I told him that I’d like to see a local doctor who was practicing as a facial reconstructive plastic surgeon in County Cork, a two-hour drive from me. This was in 2016.
I went to see him and from the moment I met with him he put me at ease. He told me that he could remove the huge amount of scar tissue in bits and pieces that was in my cheek and that in stages he could make my face symmetrical, at rest. He would go on to do a sliding temporalis operation on me and a brow lift and he adjusted the gold eye weight that was put in my eyelid to help with eye closure when I went to Leeds in May 2004. I have had five surgeries since November 2016. All of them successful.
I will never accept what happened to my face. I will forever mourn for the 15-year-old girl who lost her smile on June 8th 2002. However, I have come to the stage in my life where I realise that this paralysis has defined me and made me the resilient person that I am today. I hope to inspire the children that I teach. I hope that my story gives others hope. I know that I am in the minority with the type of facial paralysis that I have. I feel very alone in this. I don’t know anyone else who has acquired such severe and complete facial paralysis through skull trauma. There is one girl in the U.S. who someone from the Australian and New Zealand Facebook group put me in touch with. I don’t believe that I have recovered to the same scale as her though because I have no movement whatsoever on the left-hand side of my face.
I hope you like my story. I just wish I didn’t feel so alone in the sense that I often feel like I am one of the only people that have this type of facial paralysis from skull trauma.
Sylvia Weadick Briscoe, age 33, Ballybunion, Co. Kerry, Ireland.
Disclaimer: Please note that views expressed are person’s own and should not be considered a recommendation of particular medical treatments, therapies or surgeries. We would always advise you seek advice from a health professional with experience in facial palsy who can assess your individual needs.