NEED TO KNOW
Long Island man Tyson Carter was attacked when he stepped in to help a young woman who was being harassed by two men at a bus stop
A fight ensued, and one of the men bit Carter’s nose off
He underwent a life-changing surgery, and his confidence has been restored
A man whose nose was bitten off during a fight when he stepped in to defend a woman being harassed has undergone life-changing surgery that restored his face.
Tyson Carter, 41, had observed two men harassing a young woman at a Brentwood, N.Y. bus stop on January 27, ABC-7 reports. But when he tried to offer assistance, he was attacked.
“It was two-on-one and they stomped on my head and chest,” Carter told the outlet. “But I wasn’t going down. I guess he got frustrated. I knew he bit my nose. My jacket was bloody [but] I didn’t realize how bad it was.”
Northwell Health
The 3D model of Tyson Carter’s face with the clay nose attached.
The extent of his injuries was discovered when he sought medical care at Long Island’s Northwell Health’s South Shore University Hospital. His nose, Carter says, had been bitten off.
But as Dr. Laurent Ganry, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Northwell Health’s Jewish Medical Center, explained during a press conference, he was able to fashion a new nose for Carter using an old Egyptian technique combined with modern technology.
He first 3D-printed Carter’s face, then used clay to make a nose model based on how it looked in past selfies. “Now I have a template,” he said, according to ABC-7. Taking skin and muscle from his forearm and forehead, Ganry was able to give Carter his nose back through a series of three surgeries.
New blood vessels have grown, Ganry said, explaining, “Basically, the nose is alive.”
The procedure to create new noses dates back to ancient Egyptians, the surgeon told the outlet, when people lost noses due to illness or torture.
Now, Carter says his friends don’t even notice anymore. “[For] most people that know me and haven’t seen me in a while, it doesn’t even register when they see my face,” he said. He can also wear his eyeglasses again. As Carter explained, “Without my glasses, I can see maybe six inches in front of me.”
And while he says, “for me, it’s, like, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing,” for his medical team, who performs the procedure for people who’ve lost their noses to dog bites or skin cancer, “it’s business as usual.”
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