Plastic surgery for kids? At Valley Children’s, it’s about making them whole again

Street sales of the special Kids Day edition of The Fresno Bee were suspended this year due to coronavirus concerns. This story was to appear in the special edition. To make a 2020 Kids Day donation, go to valleychildrens.org/kidsday, or text GEORGE to 20222 to make an automatic $10 contribution. Kids Day will return to the streets in 2021.

One year ago, 14-year-old Arturo Alvarez woke up in a hospital with a scary, deep cut across his face.

Arturo and his mother give thanks to a plastic surgery team at Valley Children’s Hospital for the best-they-could-hope-for outcome.

“You have to look close to his face just to see the scar,” says Arturo’s mother, Candelaria Rojas.

Arturo recounts how he came to be injured.

He was getting a ride home from his brother after spending the night at his sister’s house.

“My brother picked me up early in the morning. ... I just remember waking up in the ambulance and I couldn’t see anything but I heard my brother’s voice saying everything would be OK.”

Arturo’s brother had fallen asleep at the wheel, lost control of the car and crashed. Arturo was not wearing his seat belt. The left side of his face was deeply cut and fractured from his eye through his nose down into his cheek.

Arturo was taken to a nearby hospital but due to the complexity and size of the injury he was sent to Valley Children’s Hospital.

Warm blanket, cold fear

“I just remember waking up in the hospital bed, but it was really cold so I asked for a blanket. So they gave me a warm blanket,” Arturo says.

Rojas recalls waking up that morning to news of the crash and her daughter rushing her to the hospital to see her son.

“I was confused and scared and even though I was trying to be as strong as I could, inside me, I was like dying seeing my kid with an open face.”

Dr. Michael Galvez, the pediatric hand and upper extremity plastic surgeon who was on call when Alvarez arrived at Valley Children’s, describes the injury.

“He had a laceration through his eyebrow down through where the tendon inserts on the bone for the eyelids. The fracture went through part of the face called the naso-orbito ethmoid (NOE) complex.”

There was the open fracture down Arturo’s cheek and nose, and the lacrimal system that controls tears was damaged, the doctor said.

Galvez said his team first cleaned the wound. Titanium plates were placed to hold together the displaced bones on Arturo’s orbital floor as well as his NOE complex. Stents were placed to allow everything to heal.

Blessing the doctor’s hands

“It took many months for his incision to fully heal,” the doctor said. “His scarring actually healed up pretty good overall. And more importantly, that fracture is healed really well. The results actually came out very reasonable where it’s even hard to see that he had such a significant injury.”

Rojas says that the family and especially Arturo learned a valuable lesson: now before driving they make sure everyone in the car is buckled up.

And she says she is grateful to both Galvez and the staff at Valley Children’s.

“I’m always blessing Dr. Galvez and his hands. I just always pray that he is in good health because we need him here. This staff is wonderful. I mean, my experience with Valley Children’s is just wonderful.”

This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 7:18 PM.