Family Has Reason to Smile After Surgery

The goal of the surgery was to give 7-year-old Chelsey Thomas the ability to smile, but it was her parents who were grinning from ear to ear Friday night.

That’s because Friday’s procedure marked the halfway point to realizing a lifelong dream for Chelsey, who has been unable to smile since birth due to a rare neurological condition called Moebius syndrome.

In 10 1/2 hours of surgery, a specialist from Canada replaced the nonfunctional nerve in the left side of the Palmdale girl’s lip with an active one from her thigh.

It won’t be until sometime next spring that he can do the same to the right side so Chelsey can enjoy a full smile.

But her parents did her smiling for her as surgeons pronounced the operation a success at a news conference Friday night after the surgery.

“We couldn’t ask for a better Christmas present,” said Lori Thomas, Chelsey’s mother. Topping the energetic second-grader’s Christmas list--along with new Rollerblades and a race car--is Baby So Real, a doll that smiles on its own.

After enduring years of teasing from schoolmates, the youngster decided this summer that she wanted to smile before her eighth birthday next June.

It’s “a very likely possibility” that her wish will come true, said Dr. Ronald Zuker, the Canadian surgeon who performed the operation.

In November, preparations for the first part of the surgery were complete, but a fever blister was found on Chelsey’s lip and the procedure was called off to avoid infection.

Chelsey counted the days until the Nov. 21 operation, so to keep her calm this time, her parents concealed the new date from her until this past Monday.

Thursday night, after being filmed by two news crews, Chelsey was so excited about the surgery that she had a hard time getting to bed.

“She was bouncing off the walls,” said her mom.

At 3:30 Friday morning, however, the Thomases were up and beginning the trek from their house in Palmdale to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Woodland Hills. Carrying her favorite doll, Sara, and her Michael Jackson and “Footloose” tapes, Chelsey was getting nervous--not about spending more than 10 hours under the knife in a rare procedure, but about the anesthetic needle that would precede it.

As Chelsey worked on a coloring book in a room at Kaiser, a nurse sidled up to her parents. “She’s going to get her S-H-O-T,” she said, spelling out the dreaded word, Lori Thomas recalled.

Chelsey immediately stopped coloring. “What?!” she cried.

But once the shot was given, it was smooth sailing. After Chelsey told her parents that she loved them, attendants wheeled her into pre-op and Lori and Bob Thomas began a long day of waiting.

“I wish somebody would come out every two hours to tell me how things are going,” said the nervous mother, waiting for news.

“Well,” her husband said, “they’re busy.”

The Thomases couldn’t even eat until about 2 p.m., after bumping into a surgeon taking a break who assured them that things were going well.

In the complex procedure, a set of muscles, veins and arteries were extracted from Chelsey’s left thigh and transplanted to her left cheek, their upper ends attached beneath her eye socket, the lower ends near the chin in the corner of her mouth.

Next, an expendable nerve that helps control chewing was hooked into her new facial muscles. It is hoped that within several weeks, the nerve will grow into the muscles and give her the ability to control them.

It will take another operation to treat the other side of her face, and doctors said Friday that it would be several months before Chelsey developed control over her new muscle.

Chelsey’s 14-year-old brother Brett said that even though Friday’s surgery is a half-step, it should cheer her up. “She’s had a real positive attitude toward all this, and this just means she’ll be able to show it,” he said.

Chelsey’s parents said their daughter wouldn’t be satisfied until both sets of nerves were working.

“It’s going to have to be the whole thing,” Lori Thomas said.