About Face
By Bill Adams a Gainesville Today Health editor

He smoked his first Marlboro when he was 14 "just to be like the other kids", but after smoking his last one about a month ago, now all Marion Thornton wants is "just to have a face like everyone else. "Not that he wants to be handsome. Not that he wants to look any younger than his 60 years. He just wants to get back the lips and cheek and nose that cancer has virtually eaten away during the past eight years.

It's not that I want people to stop staring at me," contends the Bradford County heavy equipment operator. "It's just that I want people to stop looking away when they see my face. I'm the first to tell you that I don't like to see myself in the mirror every morning. In fact, when I did look in there sometimes I just hoped it would be the last day I would ever wake up."

Today, however—-thanks to doctors with big hearts as big as their skills and a hospital that cared—-Marion Thorn­ton looks forward to looking into that morning mirror to see the progress being made in the total reconstruction of a face that had been described as "grotesque."
That same word might be used to describe his life for nearly a decade.

Yes, it was back in 1992 that the heavy equipment operator for Jackson­ville's WPC Industrial Contractors first noticed a "cold sore" on his lower lip. He put some salve on it and waited for it to go away.

It didn 't.

After four years, the little cold sore made a dramatic trek across his entire lower lip. The salve didn't help, and neither did the major hospital to which he finally turned for help. "They took one look at me and wanted $1,800 up front," remembers Thornton. "I was working, but I hadn't been with the company long enough to have health insurance. I didn't have the money either."

He also didn't have the will to live through what they told him would have to be done and how he would look after the work was completed.

He was told that all his teeth would be pulled, his lymph nodes would be removed, and his left jawbone would be extracted. He would look like, he was told, "a gar­goyle."

So, after learning that he would lose most of his face, Marion Thornton gave up and admits to accepting his impend­ing death.

It wasn 't that easy.

He lived.

And everything that the first hospital had predicted came true with help from the malignancy that obviously was the result of smoking all those Marlboros the first day of this new century Marion Thornton had lost most of his face, and he "wanted to die."

Jut a friend he hadn't seen for 20 ears came to a family dinner and saw beyond what seemed to be a Halloween mask he was wearing that evening.

Wanda Davis saw what she remembered all those years; a tender-hearted, loving man who always cared for others more than himself—and now even dra­matically more so.

"I had a doctor that had saved my leg from cancer," relied Ms. Davis. "I said, 'Marion, if anybody on earth can help you it’s Charles Graper."

It took her almost until the end of February before she could talk her chain-smoking friend into going to the Graper Facial Institute and talking to Charles Graper, now internationally known for his inno­vative reconstructive and cosmetic sur­gical skills.

Dr Graper, past president of the Florida Academy of Cosmetic Surgery and a member of the faculty of the University of Miami School of Medicine, took one look at Marion Thornton and quietly observed, "I don't think there's anything I can do for you." Then, he took another look and remarked, "Well, maybe there is."

On March 5, after smoking yet another Marlboro on the way to North Florida Regional Hospita] in Gaines­ville, Marion Thornton underwent 16 hours of surgery. Dr. Graper removed all of the involved tissue around the cancer, which had already destroyed Thornton's upper and lower lips and nose. Then, he began "Stage I" of the reconstruction of the lips and nose areas, removed all of the affected teeth and lymph nodes and surgically created an airway.

After being discharged from the hos­pital and "many Tylenols and no Marlboros," Mr. Thornton began receiving reconstruction procedures that would involve replacement of his teeth and the creation of his nose and lips.

Today, after hearing his story and seeing his before and after pictures, one of the first questions most people ask is "Who did it?"

Eventually, the question "Who paid for it?" pops up.

Well, the one who did it was Dr. Charles Graper with help from Dr. Schilling, oncologist; and Dr. Aldo Seager, anesthesiologist.

To find out who paid for it, ask Tony Campo. He's the director of "We Care Physician Referral Network", a part of the Alachua County Medical Assoc­iation.

"We afford free care to persons who are not eligible for public assistance, but are still indigent and uninsured," explains Campo, whose network—just in the past year—-has given $2.7 mil­lion in medical assistance despite the fact the group administratively operates on a $149,000 annual budget, "All area hospitals, ancillary facilities, labs, and about 90 percent of all our 600 local doctors participate."

And, of all the hundreds of people the "We Care" venture has helped over the ten years it has been operating, it is unlikely that any one of them is more appreciative than Marion Thornton.

If you need proof of that, you just need to see him look into a mirror these days.

He's the one smiling