READY TO SMILE AGAIN

A groundbreaking surgical procedure will restore this Limpopo teen's badly damaged jaw and teeth

- NASIFA SULAIMAN

WHEN her daughter fell in the bathroom seven years ago and smashed her face into the sink , Monique Alberts realised her recovery would take a while.

Eager to give her puppy a wash, Chiara, then seven years old, had charged into the bathroom with the dog under her arm, reached for the shampoo and slipped.

The force with which her face hit the sink not only broke her nose and jaw, it also impaled her four front teeth into her jaw, fractured her skull and damaged two vertebrae in her neck.

What the mom of two didn’t expect was that Chiara, now 15, would still be having operations to fix the damage almost a decade after the horrific accident.

Her daughter, who’s had 47 procedures so far and is still unable to smile properly because her facial muscles don’t move the way they should, is extremely self-conscious about her mouth.

But now a Cape Town-based surgeon and his team will rebuild her mouth – including her upper jaw – and give her a brand-new smile.

When YOU meets Chiara and Monique, they’re in the Cape Town office of Professor Rushdi Hendricks, a maxillofacial and oral surgeon and a fellow of the eminent scientists and academics’ Royal Society of South Africa.

Thanks to the professor, Chiara is now just three steps away from getting her new smile. “At least there’s hope now,” says Monique (42), who’s from Bela-Bela in Limpopo. “Because when we came to Professor Rushdi there was no hope.”

The operations will take about two years to complete and Monique is thrilled. “For us, this is the best thing that could have ever happened.”

After the accident Chiara was in and out of hospital for years, mostly to treat a recurring infection in her jaw.

Monique knew she had to do something to get to the bottom of the problem and contacted Professor Karen Brandt Onel, a New Yorkbased paediatric rheumatologist, who put her in touch with Professor Hendricks at Life Kingsbury Hospital in Cape Town.