02/23/2026
Trigger warning: su***de and gun violence.
As a plastic surgeon with a long career, people sometimes ask what my first case was. It wasn’t cosmetic. It was a complex facial reconstruction after a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The operation lasted 40 hours. We reconstructed the skeleton of his face with a free fibula flap, which at the time was still a relatively new microsurgical technique.
Plastic surgery isn’t always aesthetics. Often, it’s high-stakes reconstruction and the meticulous restoration of structure and function.
