Jean-Marie

Right extended orbital epithesis, attached using magnets

“I think that everybody has their own self-image. I am a chef by trade, but my life turned upside down in 1998 at the age of 45. One morning when I was going to work, I couldn’t see properly. After consulting several specialists, the diagnosis struck me like a hammer: I had cancer, they had to operate as quickly as possible… The operation lasted 12 hours. It was only the next day when I saw myself in the mirror that I saw what I now looked like. I didn’t have any hair, I had one eye only and a large dressing on the other. I didn’t recognise myself.

You start off with an image of yourself, but what the mirror throws back at you is not the same. They cut away half of who you are. At the beginning, when you find out that you’re ill, you don’t have much hope, you feel really low and then bit by bit, there are people who help you - like Dr Hémar who saved my life by removing the tumour and then spoke about prosthetic reconstruction using magnets, and Anne-Marie Riedinger who gave me my face back thanks to a facial prosthesis. You learn how to live again with your disability. You find an identity once more, you find yourself.

The illness and what it did to my face took its toll on my family. They went through a period of grief. It isn’t a problem for young children. My grandson, Antoine, who was then in infant school, drew people with one eye. He was proud to tell his friends that his grandad had a bionic eye!

Today, thanks to the prosthesis - which is very much a part of me – my old face has come back again! I’m sure there are many people who are in the same situation as me, who have had an ear, eye or nose amputated and I would like to show them that it is possible to rebuild yourself entirely with the help of a prosthesis!”