A Michigan woman whose face was “pulverized” after her stepfather shot her has had a new nose reconstructed from her own ribcage.
Amedy Dewey, 24, was left legally blind and with serious facial injuries when her stepfather shot her in the face and killed her mother before eventually turning the gun on himself in a vicious attack in January 2018.
Dewey, who has undergone 20 surgeries since the shooting, finally got a new nose to replace the one she lost.
A six-hour operation, including removing a six-inch piece of bone from her rib cage, allowed surgeons to reconstruct a nose for Dewey using a technique developed during World War I.
Amedy Dewey, 24, was left legally blind and disfigured when her stepfather shot her in the face in 2018
Dewey, pictured before the attack, is now legally blind and has required 20 operations on her face
Dave and Lisa Somers were both found shot to death by their car in Lowell, Michigan, on January 6, 2018
On the way to the operating room, Dewey and her aunt stopped at a gas station and a little girl asked her why she had no eye.
Dewey told the child it had to be removed after a “very bad man hurt me,” she recalled to USA Today.
“I have family members who are afraid of me,” Dewey told the outlet.
“When I get little kids who don’t know me at all, and they start doing that, it makes me feel like I’m a human being again, and not this object they’re staring at.”
Surgeons at Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, led by craniofacial plastic surgeon Dr. Christian Vercler, removed the rib bone, chiseling it down before inserting the bone under Dewey’s skin and putting the wiring in place.
Vercler, who performed many of Dewey’s other surgeries, told USA Today that restoring a face after a gunshot wound involved improvisation rather than following a step-by-step plan in a more standard procedure.
Vercler had previously used bone from Dewey’s rib cage to reconstruct part of her cheekbone that had been blown away by the gunshot wound.
The technique was developed during the First World War by Dr. Harold Gillies, the father of modern plastic surgery.
“He is known for his pioneering work in facial reconstruction techniques,” Vercler told USA Today.
The shotgun wound left Dewey with serious facial injuries
Surgeons at Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, led by craniofacial plastic surgeon Dr. Christian Vercler (photo middle) reconstructed a nose for Dewey
Dewey took her mother’s stuffed animal with her to the operating room in Ann Arbor
The surgery took almost six hours, much longer than the three initially expected, but Vercler was pleased with the results
“You can imagine that in the First World War, with the trench warfare, a lot of these guys, if they weren’t killed by an explosion in the face, they would have been devastated coming over the trench.
“And so they sent them all back from the Eastern Front to England, and Gillies devised ways to reconstruct their faces.”
Adding: ‘It’s all about understanding the anatomy and how to move parts.’
“It’s all about understanding the anatomy and how to move parts,” Vercler said. ‘That is a principle that has existed for a long time.’
The surgery took almost six hours, much longer than the three initially expected, but Vercler was pleased with the results.
“Everything went really well, you know, challenging as always,” he said.
“I think it’s big, but no one else does,” Dewey told the outlet a few weeks after the surgery.
‘It’s just my thing. I haven’t had a nose in five years,” she explained.
Dewey, 24, with her boyfriend, Charles Austin, 21, at her home in Scottville earlier this year
Dewey is now with her grandmother and studying at community college
She aspires to train as a trauma therapist and work in domestic violence advocacy
Dewey told USA Today that her stepfather was often violent and would reach for his gun when he was angry
Dewey hugs her father Robert Dewey, 47, before her nose reconstruction surgery
Dewey now lives in Luddington with her grandmother, where she is a community college student.
She aspires to train as a trauma therapist and work in domestic violence advocacy.
“I am a survivor,” she told the broadcaster. ‘What I went through, I don’t want people to go through that.
“And especially teenagers and young women who feel like they don’t have a voice,” she said.
“People need to realize that he was showing signs before this even happened,” she explained.
“I want people to see this and hear this and say, holy fuck, I’m in a similar situation.”
Dave and Lisa Somers, both 51, were found shot to death near their car on Interstate-96 near Lowell, Michigan on January 6, 2018.
Dewey, then only eighteen, was shot in the face by Somers, but miraculously survived.
The couple married in 2013 after meeting through a national adult softball team.
Lisa had three children from previous relationships, her daughter Amedy and two sons, Adam and Dylan Helminiak.
Dewey told USA Today that her stepfather was often violent and would reach for his gun when he was angry.
Nearly two-thirds of intimate partner homicides in the U.S. involve a firearm, according to data from the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund.