ake your ear off for me, please,\u201d Rosie Seelaus says to Randy James, who is sitting on a black exam chair in a special room designed for viewing colours in the Craniofacial Center on the Near West Side of Chicago.<\/p>\n
He reaches up and detaches his right ear, which she created for him out of silicone seven years before. The ear is shabby, stained from skin oil and mottled by daily use. Viewed under various lights in the neutral, grey-walled room \u2013 daylight, incandescent, fluorescent \u2013 it remains a pasty beige.<\/p>\n
James is a doctor with the Department of Veterans Affairs in Las Vegas \u2013 the fierce desert sunlight is also tough on his prosthetic ear. Seelaus is an anaplastologist, a clinician who sculpts artificial body parts for people who have lost them through injury or disease or, as with James, who never had them to begin with. He was born 58 years ago with Goldenhar syndrome, a genetic condition that distorts the fetal face, sometimes severely. Some children with Goldenhar, like James, are born missing an ear or part of an ear (he had only the right lobe). Some have bulging eyes, or no eyes at all. James\u2019s jaw was undersized and skewed. He underwent 35 surgeries, including one to construct his right cheekbone using bone shaved from his ribs. He pulls up his shirt to show off slashing scars across his ribcage.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to tell bullies I was mauled by a tiger at the zoo,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The first time I walked through the corridors of the Craniofacial Center, on the University of Illinois at Chicago\u2019s medical campus, I had to sit down. Not that I was going to faint, but the immediate possibility occurred to me. So I filled a paper cup with water and carefully lowered myself into a chair.<\/p>\n
And that was before meeting any patients. Seeing the mute plaster moulds of cleft faces, the blindly staring glass eyes and the little pyramids of false noses was enough. A baby\u2019s hand, made of silicone, grasped at the air…….<\/p>\n