Like a lot of 13-year-olds, Anika Gibson-Craig has mastered the selfie.
Unlike others her age, though, Gibson-Craig was missing a key component to the picture taking process.
“I couldn’t smile at all on this side of my face,” she told Global News, motioning to the right side of her face.
Born with Poland-Moebius syndrome the muscles on the right side of her face were paralyzed until she underwent life-changing surgery just over four years ago.
“Basically what they did is they took a piece of my muscle from my left leg and they moved it into the right side of my face. Just a little chunk of it,” explained the Grade 7 student from Cochrane, Alta.
The procedure, called smile reanimation surgery, took 10 hours to complete and was performed by Dr. Rob Harrop at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
The surgery was a success but Gibson-Craig had to work to smile — it wasn’t automatic, not at first anyway.
“To start with she needed to think about biting down in order to smile,” Harrop said. “But after a while she got used to that and it became an unconscious thing for Anika when she wanted to smile, just to smile.”
Now Gibson-Craig’s smile can be widely seen across southern Alberta. She’s part of a campaign by the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation to promote their latest lottery.
Money raised from the annual fundraiser will go towards purchasing new technology for the hospital.
At the top of that list, is a new high-definition 3D operating microscope. The one used in Gibson-Craig’s smile reanimation surgery was critical to the success of her procedure.
It allowed Harrop to see and use sutures that were “thinner than a hair” to attach arteries, veins and blood vessels from the leg muscle to the facial muscles that would allow Gibson-Craig to smile.
But even four years ago, the microscope was nearing the end of its shelf life.
“The old microscope dates back to the years before this new Alberta Children’s Hospital even existed and the foundation helped us get the funding for that microscope,” said Harrop. “So the foundation is helping us get a new microscope and of course in the whatever it is, the 13 years since we had the old microscope, the technology has improved dramatically.”
So too has Gibson-Craig’s ability to express herself.
“It changed my life because, without my smile, people couldn’t really tell what I was thinking… and so they couldn’t tell that I was happy,” added Gibson-Craig.
Tickets for the Alberta Children’s Hospital Lottery can be purchased online. The early bird deadline is June 27, 2019.
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