Elisa: Look, you are almost done. You are
so, so hungry, I know.
My name is Elisa Relyea. I live in Hyde Park,
New York, which is in Duchess County and I am 42.
When I was born, I was born without the ability
to smile, to have a lot of facial expression. A very blank look.
A lot of people didn't really understand what
it was or what I had. It was... I guess from a third perspective, you know, most mothers
would get excited when their child would smile or, you know, just light up and my mother
didn't have that because I had a very blank look on my face.
When I was 16, I distinctively remember I
had a really bad day at school, which was typical for me, and I think my mother finally
said, "We can go and see a doctor".
When I was - I believe I had just turned 17,
I had the surgery of tweaking my temporalis muscle. They inverted it and when in and connected
in to what we call my chewing muscles and that was done at Winthrop university hospital
in Long Island by Doctor Leonard.
And - I can demonstrate what it is - it's
when I bite, you can see that my face moves. It may not be as natural, but it's probably
as close as they can get to natural.
At that time - so they went... I had the incisions,
they went in here and they actually went in here. At the same time, I also had incisions
made around my eyes and what they did is they... because of my lack of muscle tone, my face
was very droopy, so to speak, so you could probably see a little bit of red and they
tightened my eyes here.
They also inserted gold weights into my eyelids
so I could close my eyes all the way.
When Tim and I met, obviously the subject
of children came up and I was surprised at the fact that I had congenital facial paralysis
didn't scare him.
He still wanted to have children and I said
from what I understand, it's a crack shoot. It's a 50/50 chance that our children will
be born with this, and because of my family history, my dad having it, my brother, my
sister, we noticed that it was kind of less and less with each child.
So my hope was is that whatever my children
had, it would not be as severe as me.
The hardest part is with my children... because
trying to teach them to say certain words and I can't say them that well, or my son.
You know, my husband... I make him do all these crazy things with his face. They can
wrinkle his forehead and make fishy lips and I can't do that.
And I think that's the sadist thing - is that
I can't... I feel like I can't do what every other mother can do with their child.