Changing Lives
by Ingrid Hoffmeister

The headaches began late that year while she was working in a tax office in Old Town. Her doctor prescribed an MRI but she didn’t bother, believing the headaches to be stress related. In her mid-30s and a single mother of two boys, she drove on carrying a backpack heavy with responsibility. A year and half later the pain became unbearable, her left eye was bulging, and her weight had dropped dramatically. She dragged herself back to the doctor’s office. He prescribed a thyroid test along with an MRI and this time Vicki Weisen paid attention. Results from the tests revealed a hypo thyroid condition, while the MRI detected a tumor behind her left eye along with a disfiguring bone disorder of the frontal skull called fibrous dysplasia.

Fibrous dysplasia is a bone disease characterized by areas of abnormal growth. It acts like a benign bone tumor that continues to grow and expand. The affected bones can be in any part of the body, but in the case of Weisen, the bony tumors covered her face and skull.

March 2000
Twelve weeks after her diagnosis, Weisen underwent the first of three major surgeries — a frontal craniotomy and bony contouring of the skull (the thickened bone shaved down with plates and screws attached to her skull and nose), and the removal of the non-malignant tumor from behind her left eye. The surgery left her blind with the optic nerve damaged. Weisen recalls her depression and quietly confides, “I had lost my sense of smell and my head was so severely deformed that I felt like I had a case of Elephant Man.” As her facial disfigurement grew progressively worse, she found it hard to leave the house as people stared and pointed at her. “Within six months the plates and screws were coming loose,” she recalls. “They started shifting around and protruding from my head. The bones had grown again and my face hurt all the time.”

May 2001
Weisen’s doctors decided to remove the plates and screws by cutting across her skull from ear to ear, shaving off hair to her forehead. She underwent another frontal craniotomy (the thickened bone shaved down with the plates and screws reattached). “When I returned home from this surgery I was happy,” she says. “Sadly, it didn’t last long. Within six months my face was deformed again. It looked worse than before and I was depressed all over again.” Weisen confides that back at her home in Santee she felt emotionally traumatized and spent most of her time crying. With her confidence lost, her mood darkened even further.

March 2002
Two doctors in San Diego founded Doctors Offering Charitable Services (DOCS), a nonprofit organization providing free craniofacial and other reconstructive surgery to San Diegans in need. Board certified cosmetic surgeon Munish K. Batra, M.D. FACS is co-founder with Dr. Michael Halls, a micro surgeon, who tells me that for several years he and Batra had been performing pro bono surgeries in countries like Mexico, India, and Thailand, treating cleft palates and abnormally shaped heads. They both realized that there was also a real need in San Diego with between 12 and 15 percent of people without health insurance. They have treated more than 30 people with facial or body deformities, including victims of shooting and car accidents.

April 2003
Weisen’s doctor introduced her to Halls who referred her to Batra, whose surgical background includes advanced fellowship training in facial surgery. His expertise in Weisen’s specific area convinced her to undergo surgery one more time. “I admit I was so scared,” she says. “I was crying because it was a big step and I wasn’t sure of the outcome. Dr. Batra knew how depressed I was and didn’t want to shave down the bone again. The bone at that time was so deformed and growing out of control – it was horrible. Dr. Batra performed a different surgery, an 11-hour operation removing a portion of my deformed skull. He then reconstructed that portion with polyethylene and bone grafts.” Batra described the surgery in laymen terms as the near removal of the orbits around the eyes and the base of the nose plus the half skull.

September 7, 2003
I am talking to Weisen at a lunchtime fundraiser for DOCS at the offices of Halls and Batra on Carmel Valley. The grotesque features peering from photos pinned onto the DOCS notice board show little resemblance to the attractive woman standing before me. I am visibly shocked as I watch a gentle, pretty woman with soft brown eyes struggle quietly to articulate her feelings and experiences. I share my reaction with her, which brings a smile to a face that appears shy to express delight. Her shoulder-length blonde hair conceals the bumps and crevices in her skull and although not visible to the eye, she encourages me to feel them. Clearly moved by her experience she says,” It has been an ordeal. I feel like I’ve lived my whole life in three and a half years. Today, I’m lucky to be alive and feel so fortunate that I was in the right place at the right time and met Dr. Batra. Dr. Batra performed the surgery for free and all I can say is God bless Dr. Batra, for he has given me my life back and nothing I can say will ever thank him enough.”

For more information about DOCS, visit www.docscharity.com, or phone 858/847-0800.