KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Jade Metivier was only 13 when she went through three surgeries that lasted 13 hours each.
Her diagnosis of Midface Hypoplasia meant that the bones in the middle of her face didn’t grow as fast as her chin and forehead.
“I could feel that people were confused when they looked at me and I just kind of felt uncomfortable in a way,” she said.
She had trouble breathing, eating and even speaking to her friends.
“It was also hard just talking to them too, because I would say something and they just wouldn’t understand me no matter how hard I would try.”
When they found the right surgeon at New York Presbyterian, her parents Mark and Christi were nervous about the treatment plan.
“Understanding what she was going to go through, we actually had second thoughts about whether to put her through that,” her dad Mark said.
“I mean, it was scary.”
The surgery that Dr. Thomas Imahiyerobo presented was traumatic and invasive but would reconstruct Jade’s facial bones.
“It was incredibly frightening to hear that they were going to make an incision from one side of your head to the other, remove your face, and place hardware inside your skull,” recalled her mother, Christi.
“It was a lot, but I think we just knew deep down that it had to be done. It had to be done.”
Jade said that she didn’t know how extensive the surgeries were and was glad not to have known.
“I was scared and excited at the same time because I was excited that I could change my face,” she said.
“But the more I kept on asking my parents questions, the more the answers became scary.”
Jade had to remain in a medically induced coma for up to four days to allow for the swelling in her face to subside. During this daunting time, her parents played Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” as an unthinkable event unfolded.
“Lo and behold, she starts moving her hands to the music. She starts moving her hips to the music,” Mark said.
“We called the ICU nurses, and they couldn’t believe it! They brought in all the floor nurses and even some doctors. They were exclaiming, ‘This is extraordinary!’”
Jade says that she doesn’t remember a thing.
“I was starting to wonder, like, how? But I was kind of surprised myself, because all I remembered was just going through a dance in my head.”
At 16, Jade is now a sophomore in high school. She is learning tap dance for the school musical and aspires to pursue a career in biochemical engineering.
“I’m a lot more confident in myself and I look at people in the hallways and I just smile at them because I just love to be myself!”
Her parents say that while the journey was difficult, seeing her beautiful smile is all worth it.
“It took us about six or seven months and all of a sudden we saw her again, like just her spark and her fire, her determination,” Chrisi said.
“From day one, she was determined to go to school, to be normal and go back to dancing.”
