Story by Alex Stoltze
Photo courtesy of Alex Stoltze
I haven’t met many other nineteen-year-olds who have had three nose jobs and a Gortex implant in their cheek – what I call “a little piece of raincoat” – not out of pure vanity, but necessity. To breathe. To eat. To speak. To kiss. I needed these surgeries to repair a large opening that separated my mouth from my nose, splaying my lips and gums: a cleft lip and palate.
Being born with a defect that made me look different has forced me to be comfortable with myself. It is so smack dab in the middle of my face that there is no way to hide my scars, and I have never wanted to, since they are all I’ve ever identified with. It would be easier to forget about all the painful surgeries and long recoveries if I didn’t have to see the scars everyday, but it’s who I am and what makes me beautiful.
There is no specific reason why a child is born with a cleft lip and palate, though it is possible for the mother or father to pass on genes that cause the cleft. It is the most common birth defect, affecting one in 700 newborns annually. Gene therapists can assess the likelihood of a child developing a cleft in the womb based on family history and, once conceived, a cleft can be detected after seventeen weeks of pregnancy.
My condition has required extensive craniofacial surgeries from the time I was two months old. This past summer, I completed my ninth and final surgery at the age of nineteen. If my family had opted to save the time and money it cost to have these surgeries, we could have purchased a Lamborghini and traveled through Europe. Instead they spent countless hours negotiating with tired insurance representatives and doctors. My parents have been there for me through all the surgeries and pain and would never have given that up for a luxurious car or vacation.
When I had my first surgery, my lip and nose were brought together, making my appearance much more symmetrical. But the surgery left a large scar trailing down my left nostril through my lip. Six months later, I had my soft palate, the roof of my mouth, and my uvula stitched up, which allowed me to eat small pieces of food without it coming out of my nose.
At age nine, while being prepped for my fifth surgery, I urged the doctor to pierce my ears while I was under the knife. The second I woke up the first thing I asked for was a mirror. Forget that doctors had just successfully performed a bone graft by taking a piece of bone from my hip and inserting the remains into my upper left jaw, allowing my permanent teeth to come in and my jaw to develop normally. I finally had earrings after waiting for years and I wanted to see how good I looked with sparkly gold studs, despite the bandages covering my lips and nose.
I patiently waited six more years for my next surgery, which my parents and I lovingly refer to as “the ugly years,” or more respectfully, “the Picasso years.” These terms don’t offend me because I never truly felt ugly. All the doctors I have met have told me how they could sculpt me into a prettier person. After hearing that for years, it is easy for me to acknowledge that I didn’t have an aesthetically pleasing face. My face was uneven, and my nose was large and angled slightly diagonally. My top lip was narrower on the right side and larger and scarred on the left side where I had surgeries, and my teeth were spaced, colored, and weirdly shaped.
In elementary school I was occasionally made fun of because of the way I looked, but it didn’t affect me much because I had supportive friends and parents who told me how beautiful I was. It wasn’t until “the ugly years” in middle school that others began treating me differently. Kids were concerned about looking and acting cool and associating with other cool kids, which wasn’t conducive to my braces and crooked nose. I still had a lot of friends, but it was harder to meet new people at an age when others judge on looks first.
After my freshman year of high school, I finally went through a full facial reconstructive surgery. During the five-hour surgery, an ear, nose, and throat surgeon in Portland, Oregon, performed a rhinoplasty, inserted a cheek implant to even out my face, and sucked fat out of my stomach to inject into my top lip to make it symmetrical. The doctor also completely reconstructed the inside of my nose so I would able to breath easier.
I later met with a prosthodontist who gave me veneers, which are individual acrylic fake teeth that glue onto the original teeth and last about fifteen years before needing to be replaced. This process required the prosthodontist to take an electric drill to my real teeth until they were only small nubs and glue the veneers onto my stumpy old teeth. I was awake during this surgery and it was like my own personal hell. I could hear my teeth being ground away and I had to wear sunglasses so small pieces of teeth didn’t fly into my eyes. However, when my six new front teeth were finally glued on, I was no longer living in the ugly years. I walked out of my doctor’s office shaking and almost crying in pain; I looked like a new person. For the first time in my life I had symmetrical teeth and gums, and my face and smile looked beautiful.
My experiences with the surgeries prompted me to organize a trip with my mom to Tecate, Mexico, during my junior year of high school. We volunteered with doctors of the Smiles International Foundation who performed surgeries to correct twelve children’s cleft lip and palates. During the trip, I watched the same surgeries I had experienced years before. I spoke in Spanish with the mothers of those children and shared my own experience with them. The mothers said I gave them confidence about their childrens journey to a healthy and normal future.
After hearing how many families were unable to afford surgeries for their child, I realized how fortunate I was to have parents with insurance who could pay for great doctors and dentists.
Over the years I have grown to love my scars. Every day when I look in the mirror, I appreciate the journey I have gone through to have a better life now—a life filled with even more confidence, beauty, and strength.

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