Duke University
Medical Center
Intercom
VOL. 24, NO. 40
OCT. 7,1977
DURHAM, N.C.
At new Facial Rehabilitation Center
Toy elephant's treatment facilitates her own
By David Williamson
When seven-year-old Vickie Hanling
of Asheville journeyed to Duke
University Medical Center to undergo
the major plastic surgery that would
reshape her face, her stuffed toy elephant
“33" came along to provide some
company.
He didn't know what he was getting
into.
Nurses on the Neurosurgical Unit
swathed his head and long trunk in
bandages, inserted a tube in his throat so
that he could breathe and attached
intravenous feeding lines to his front legs
for nourishment.
He even accompanied Vickie on a tour
of the recovery room to listen to the
machines the two would hear when
waking up after surgery.
Vickie told him not to worry because
the doctors were doing it for their own
good, and she explained the ojseration to
him just as the nurses had explained it to
her. On the morning of surgery, she held
him oh the operating table as
anesthesiologist Donald Hooper put her
gently to sleep.
Elephant in recovery room
When the little girl awoke in the
recovery room the day after her 14-hour
transformation, she found her toy
elephant and her parents there to wish
her good morning. In the days that
followed, nurses removed “33''s
bandages just as the doctors removed her
own.
"Having a child who is scheduled for
major facial surgery bring a toy animal or
a doll to the hospital is one of the ways
we try to help the child deal with the
kinds of things that are going to be
done,” said Dr. Edward. Clifford,
co-director of Duke's Facial
Rehabilitation Center.
Describing the purpose of the new
cienter in a recent interview, Clifford,
who is a psychologist, cited Vickie
Harding as a vivacious child whose birth
defect in later years would have made her
an onlooker rather than a participant in
the social scene.
"The problem of being disfigured is
largely the problem of meeting prejudice
every day of your life," he said. "By
operating on children at an early age, we
are trying to spare them the emotional
scars this prejudice leaves as they get
older."
Apert's syndrome
Dr. Calvin Peters, head of the center's
craniofacial team, described Vickie as the
victim of a rare genetic abnormality
known to physicians as
acrocephalosyndactyly or Apert's
syndromel
The mi4dle third of her face had failed
to develo|j properly so that her eyes
bulged ou|tward endangering her vision,
and her entire face appeared
sp>oon-shaped. Her fingers and toes had
failed to separate, making her hands look
like mittens and her feet look similarly
disfigured.
During the child's operation. Dr.
Robert Wilkins, chief of neurosurgery,
peeled down the skin on her forehead
and removed a half-moon shaped plate of
bone, exposing her brain. He then lifted
the brain, temporarily shrunken by
drugs, back from its resting place in the
front of the skull and secured it with flat
steel hooks called retractors.
A more natural arrangement
Plastic surgeon Peters peeled her face
further forward and cut loose the facial
bones between her skull and lower jaw.
He and Dr. John Angelillo, an oral
(Continued on page 3)
From around the world to nursing school
By Ina Fried
Loren Melton has been around the
world twice and across the Atlantic five
times but she didn't know how to drive a
car until this summer.
She and Claudia Gerard were
classmates in an international high
school in Bangkok, Thailand. Now both
are among 90 freshman women in the
School of Nursing.
The students come from 24 states and
the District of Columbia with the largest,
19, from New York. Seventeen come from
New Jersey and nine from North
Carolina.
Both Melton and Gerard were bom in
Germany but they didn't meet until the
10th grade in Thailand.
Melton, whose family is now in
Oklahoma awaiting her father's
reassignment by the State Department,
has lived in Virginia; Vientiane, Laos;
Washington, D.C.; and Paris. Gerard,
whose family is now in Hawaii where
her father is stationed with the Air Force,
has lived in five other states.
TOGETHER AGAIN—Nvimg 6eshmen Loren Melton (left) and
Claudia Gerard (center) show Melton's Fveshnun Adviaocy Counselor
Matgaret Jowdy the native outfits they bou^t while living and
attending high school in Bangkok, Thailand. The blouses feature "ftog"
cfosings and delicate embroidny and aie worn with k>ng, daik, baggy
tiDttsen. (Photo hy Jim Waliace)
Both recall with a sense of adventure
the crowded conditions of Bangkok, a
city of six million people.
Adventures in Bangkok
Riding in a taxicab, "you put your life
in your hands," Gerard said. "It there
were two lanes painted on the street,
there would be five lanes of cars.
Motorcycles drove on the sidewalks and
zipf>ed in and out of traffic to get to the
traffic lights. I never saw a speed limit
posted the whole time 1 was there^."
"Bangkok used to be the Venice of
Asia," Melton said. "Then the canals in
the main part of the city were filled in."
Now the remaining canals are polluted
and they flood during the monsoons, she
added.
Prices were very low in Bangkok, the
students remarked. For instance, a
person could buy a long-stemmed rose
for five cents, a bouquet of orchids for
five dollars and a meal for 50 cents.
Adjusting to new home
Living in North Carolina will be an
adjustment, especially for Melton, who
has lived eight of the last nine years
overseas. The young women will no
longer hear children whispering to their
mothers, "foreigiters have big no^."
But Melton will have a chance to see her
first live football game.
Both have received financial aid to
attend- Duke. Melton won a $1,000
Overseas Scholarship from the
Federation of American Women's Clubs,
and Gerard received a $2,800 grant from
the Federation of Nursing.
Nursing freshmen from North
Carolina are Lisa Kay Adams of
Smithfield; Shirley Anne Ballantyne.
Susan Fitzgibbon and Anne Bauoom
Keesler of Charlotte; Susan Elizabeth
Beaty of Madison; Karen Ann Hardee of
Raleigh; Sandra Joe Maxwdl and Beth
Lorraine Russell of Greensboro; and
Diane Jo Starling of Durham.
(ContiHued on page 4)