Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 112, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 11, 1980 Page: 4 of 34
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4—SECTION 1—THE NEWS-TELEGRAM- Sulphur Spring*, T*xo*, Sundoy, May 11, 1980.
Surgically-built tongue gives child new chance at life
By DOLORES BARCLAY
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Three
years ago, Jorge Gonzalez was
a bizarre, elfin child. He had
floppy, oversized ears, a bird-
like, pointed chin and a mouth
that was tiny at its opening and
huge inside. He was 10 years old
and looked 6.
Duchess-
acquitted
MADRID (AP) - The
daughter of the late Gen.
Francisco Franco has been
acquitted on appeal of at-
tempting to smuggle her
father's medals from Spain, her
attorney said Friday.
Francisco de Guinea Gauna
said an appeals tax court
overturned an earlier con-
viction of Dutchess Carmen
Franco and ordered the return
to her of the medals and the
equivalent of $95,000 in a bond.
He said the court’s decision
also removed a slur on the
family name.
The duchess was charged
after a customs officer stopped
her April 13, 1978, as she
prepared to board a flight to
Switzerland.
She was accused of trying to
take national art treasures
from Spain, and her defense
was that they were private
medals belonging to the family.
Doctors said his strange
appearance was due to an
unexplained birth defect: Jorge
was born without a tongue.
The defect distorted his facial
structure. The absence of a
tongue made eating a problem
and caused malnutrition.
But In 1977, he came from
Bogota, Colombia, to New
York, where a plastic surgeon
created a tongue for Jorge out
of tissues and muscles in his
neck. Next month, in the latest
refinement on the operation, the
tongue will be trimmed and
sculpted, Doctors say he
already looks and feels much
better.
“From the first operation to
now, he’s grown tremendously
— almost a foot,’’ said Dr.
Richard Boies Stark, attending
surgeon of the plastic surgical
service at St. Luke’s Hospital
Center.
“When he first came up from
Colombia, he was stunted in
growth because of malnutrition.
Everything he ate he had to
push with his finger to a little
gullet in the back of his throat.
“He also wasn’t able to
handle liquids very well. He’d
choke,” Stark said.
In addition, the boy could
hardly talk.
Today, with his new tongue,
Jorge can eat normally. His
speech also has improved, said
Stark.
The doctor said there were no
clues in the family history or in
his mother’s pregnancy as to
why the child was born
tongueless. He is an only child,
bom when his mother was in
her 30s.
Jorge was not mentally dull,
Stark said, but he was socially
retarded.
“Other children were very
cruel,” Stark said.
Before the operation, the
inside of Jorge’s mouth was
larger than normal and seemed
even more cavernous because
there was no tongue. There was
bone where there should have
been muscle, trimming the
mouth to a smaller-than-usual
opening.
Jorge’s operation was a rare
procedure, say medical
Ifathorities. There is little in
medical literature about tongue
reconstruction.
The first operation was in
July 1977, when Stark recon-
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structed the tongue and did a
bone graft. A year later, a
larger bone graft was made.
Last year, the tiny opening to
his mouth was enlarged to give
him a better bite.
A special fund set up by some
of Stark's former patients paid
for Jorge’s anesthesia and stay
at St. Luke’s. “We did not
charge anything,” Stark said.
Jorge’s tongue was made
from die neck's strap muscles,
which run from the collar bone
to the chin. They account for
certain sounds one hears in the
voice.
First, his doctors made a slit
on each side of the front of his
neck. The flesh and muscles’
were pushed up and out, for-
ming a ridge in the shape of a
suitcase handle under his chin.
This ridge'eventually became
his tongue. It was skinned,
partially detached from the
neck, then pushed up into the
mouth through the jaw, using a
tunnel created by snipping into
the jawbone and cutting away
some other, useless bone that
had grown into Jorge's mouth
where a tongue should have
been.
The str-ap muscles are in
front of the voice-box and not
terribly important," Stark said.
“We can do without them, and I
think this was probably a better
use.
Skin from Jorge’s buttocks
was grafted onto his neck to
cover the raw space left by the
shifted muscles. A small piece
of bone from the pelvis replaced
the T-shaped bone that had been
cut from the’ jaw.
“Jorge-can-now feel but he
can't taste,"’ Stark said. “The
sense of taste is very crude. We
taste sweet, sour and salt.
Everything else is what you
breathe.”
Stark also performed
cosmetic surgery on Jorge's
ears to reduce their size, and
when the boy returns to New
York for final work on the
tongue, Stark will also work on
Jorge's misshapen nose. The
boy's te^th are also badly
placed, so he will see an or-
thodontist.
"When a person who has had
an outstanding deformity starts
getting improvement, it’s the
greatest psychotherapy in the
world. Most shed phobias,”
Stark said.
' “Fortunately, Jorge is just
about the right age. He’s going
through adolescence now and I
want to' make him a good-
looking boy.”
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 112, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 11, 1980, newspaper, May 11, 1980; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth824901/m1/4/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.