Girl Born with No Eyes or Nose, Gets a Nose
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Cassidy Hooper with her older sisters Ashton and Lexi. (Courtesy Susan Hooper)(CHARLOTTE, N.C.) — Cassidy Hooper was born with no eyes and no nose, but on Sept. 18, the North Carolina 17-year-old will undergo the final surgery that will give her a nose.
“It’s been a long process, but the day has finally come,” said her father, J. Aaron Cassidy, a 48-year-old engineer. “Cassidy is certainly excited for this day to be here.”
Hooper, a senior at Governor Morehead School, told ABC News earlier this year that she is excited that for the first time, she will be able to smell and breathe through her nose.
“I’ll have a real nose like everyone else’s,” she said.
Since 2007, when she was 11, Hooper has gone through a series of skin graft and facial reconstruction surgeries at Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte. In three final surgeries done over two to three weeks, doctors will stretch skin flaps over a bone or cartilage graft from another part of her body.
No one knows why Hooper was born without eyes and a nose, a rare birth defect that likely occurred during the first two weeks of gestation.
“Her heart and brain are normal,” said her mother, Susan Hooper, 43, who’s a kindergarten teacher. “Nothing else is going on with her.”
The surgery will be performed by Dr. David C. Matthews, a pediatric surgeon. So far, Cassidy has undergone four to five “expander” operations to break through her gums. Then, she had surgery to create nasal passages and break her jaw to set it properly.
That was followed by a skin graft to help keep her nasal hole open, because it kept closing. She underwent another major surgery on her jaw so that the upper jaw could move forward and be more in line with her lower jaw. Three more surgeries were done this summer to prepare the area for her nose to be attached.
As a little girl, Cassidy had prosthetics for eyes, but at $5,000 apiece, the family could not afford to replace the custom-made eyes when she outgrew them.
“Insurance didn’t pay one cent,” said her mother. “We had already started the process to do her nose, moving her eyes closer together and having her skull reshaped. We were not going to pay for it then have to pay again.”
She said once Cassidy’s nasal surgery was completed, they would buy new prosthetic eyes.
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