Ludovic

Right auricular prosthesis, clipped on a gold bar since 1998

“I am 30 years old and I have been wearing an auricular prosthesis for 20 years. With my twin brother, I was the oldest of 9 siblings and our family was very close-knit. I am now the happy father of my 3-year-old daughter. I’ve had a deformity on my pinna since birth. I have never tried to hide it and it has never been a problem for me or my friends and family.

I had my first prosthesis at the age of 7. At that time, 3-D printouts didn’t exist and so the anaplastologist made a sculpture of my natural ear and set it in a mould, adding silicone colours to reproduce the skin colour faithfully.  

I immediately adopted it and felt that it was a part of me. It has never been a barrier to my personal development. Over the years I have used my prosthesis to start off conversations and it has even become an asset at work. It intrigues people and they’re interested in it. Nobody notices that it’s a prosthesis. I change it every 2 years or redo the colouring in summer when it looks a shade too light and my family and friends suggest I should go for a visit to see my anaplastologist.

I do a lot of activities with my prosthesis - I like playing football, going to the swimming pool, and so on. I’m a bit on the reckless side, I have been in charge of organising children’s play activities and have horsed around with them a lot.

I could tell loads of stories about my prosthesis, including when I had a car accident and my car rolled over. When the firefighters got there, they thought my ear had been torn off in the accident, but I found it sitting in the grass!

One day I went to an ear piercing artist and asked him to have my ears pierced from top to bottom. He told me I was obviously very motivated, but that I had to wait for 15 minutes. So I put my ear on the counter and told him that I was going off to do my shopping in the meantime. The ear-piercing artist fell over laughing and did my eyebrow piercing free of charge – which is what I actually came for!”