San Fernando Valley : Surgery Will Give Girl, 7, Ability to Smile

Seven-year-old Chelsey Thomas doesn’t know yet whether she has dimples.

Because of a rare neurological condition affecting the nerves in her face, the Palmdale second-grader has literally never smiled. She can’t.

Precocious and energetic, Chelsey didn’t seem to mind terribly, until recently.

She had her pink in-line skates, bicycle motocross races, soccer practice and two big brothers to keep her busy.

But there was no getting around the sad side to the medical condition called Moebius syndrome.

“Some kids think she’s not a nice person because she can’t smile,” said her mother, Lori Thomas. “She feels bad when kids tease her. . . . She says all she wants to do is smile.”

Surgery can fix the problem, but specialists who can perform the particular type of microvascular surgery Chelsey must undergo are rare--and the procedure costs $70,000.

After her family found a surgeon, the family this week got the good news from its health insurer, Kaiser Permanente.

“She’s covered in full,” said Krista Hershey, a spokeswoman for Kaiser.

The surgery involves extracting two complete sets of muscles, veins and arteries from Chelsea’s right and left thighs. The muscles will be transplanted into Chelsey’s cheeks.

Next, an expendable nerve that helps control chewing must be hooked into her new facial muscles. The nerve will take several weeks--or months, possibly--to grow into her new muscles and take control of them.

When it does, she should have the ability to smile by clenching her teeth as if she were chewing.