rh24
10 Years Experience
Naples, FL
Female, 34
I am also referred to as an Anaplastologist or Maxillofacial Prosthetist. I make prosthetic facial anatomy for people who need it due to congenital birth defects, trauma (burns, accidents, etc), and cancer. Essentially, I'm an artist who works in medicine. Ask me anything!
Well, I usually refuse to send a patient home without the both of us being satisfied with the result. However, sometimes depending on the deformity, I cannot construct the ear as "perfectly" as I would like to. Some patients are understanding about this, some are not. If they are not satisfied for other reasons (maybe the color doesn't match perfectly, it doesn't fit as tightly/securely as they would like it, or maybe they want just a slight part of the actual ear adjusted) then yes, I will redo it in most cases when they are unsatisfied.
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Thank you! Yes, there really are no words to describe how rewarding this job is. I ended up in this profession by chance, I had never even heard of it before. I studied scientific art in college, and during this time I happened upon a television show where this profession was featured. It takes a certain type of artist to achieve the desired result - a perfectionist. Ultimately, the goal is to make the prosthesis virtually undetectable to others.
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I have not constructed a prosthetic nose besides the ones I have made at workshops. I'd love to though! The majority of my work is ears.
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Ha! Actually yes.........as a matter of fact, some of my patients have the type of sense of humor and security where they will pull it off to freak people out. As for me, I put one on someone's dinner plate once. Can't say that wasn't enjoyable........ :)
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Correctional Officer
Were there a lot of suicides in your prison, and what's the most common way prisoners do it?
Peace Corps Volunteer
Are Peace Corps volunteers just a bunch of "hippie freaks?"
Birthday Party Clown
OK seriously, how DOES the clown car thing work?
Great question! 1 in about 5000 children are born with a microtia, which is a small, deformed ear. Occasionally, they are born with absolutely no ear(s). Most of these patients do not have an ear canal. Usually, a BAHA (bone-anchored hearing aid) is surgically implanted when this is the case. However, in situations when there is indeed an ear canal (most often in the trauma, accident, and burn cases), the ear actually does aid hearing to a certain extent. Imagine a megaphone that helps project sound. Essentially, the prostheses would be considered purely cosmetic for someone born without an ear and ear canal.
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Thank you! Insurance coverage is very tricky. Trauma patients usually don't have a problem with coverage, depending on their insurance. Patients with birth defects usually have the most problem getting coverage, we often have to file repeatedly. Medicaid patients are by far the biggest problem. Sometimes they are refused coverage, and the times that they are "covered", we only receive about a third of what the prosthesis costs. You got that right, it's EXTREMELY time consuming, but that comes with the territory.
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Well it seems pretty obvious that he was highly addicted to plastic surgery. What most people don't know is that he suffered from a condition called vitiligo, a skin disorder characterized by smooth, white patches on various parts of the body, caused by the loss of the natural pigment. When his symptoms appeared, he bleached his skin. I'm sure this was just another result of his addiction and someone seeking "perfection" in their vanity.
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