Army Lab Gives Soldiers New Faces

Nine years into the war in Afghanistan and seven in Iraq, a little known prosthetics laboratory at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio is giving horribly disfigured soldiers hope as they face their new lives.

Master Sgt. Todd Nelson, shown here, is one of them.

Nelson lost his right eye and ear in a flash when a car bomb in Afghanistan exploded, sending fire up his arm and over his head.

After years of painstaking work, the military has given him a bright blue eye and ear lightly freckled and pinked from summer sun.

To create prosthetic ears, the lab uses cameras that generate 3-D images for technicians to make molds.

When a patient has one ear remaining, a mirror-image ear is created. Two missing ears are more difficult, said Villalobos, but the lab has created ears using family members as models.

Skin tone is matched using powdered pigment and tiny red and blue embroidery threads to create the visual effect of veins. Freckles are painted on, and tops of ears are pinked to mimic sun exposure. Some soldiers get "summer ears" and "winter ears" to account for skin-tone variation.

Adhesive can be used to keep them in place but Nelson opted for titanium implants that allow the prosthetic to magnet on.

His ear took two years to construct, in part because scar tissue prevented the implant from staying in place.

Before the wars, the 26-year-old lab's patients were almost exclusively cancer and civilian trauma survivors. Wounded warriors now make up about one-fifth of the roughly 425 patients they treat each year.

"Honestly, people really don't know it's artificial," said Nelson, whose injuries three years ago included third-degree burns, a skull fracture and broken jaw. "In casual social interactions, I see much smaller cases where people stare."

The 37-year-old Army mechanic from Evergreen, Colo. has already undergone 43 surgeries to heal his wounds and burns.

But of his new ears, Nelson is optimistic. "I do feel like I have the best-looking one ever made," he said.

Then he smiled.