>> That question, what happened?
>> What happened?
>> Oh my God.
[MUSIC].
>> Two o'clock in the morning we got a call.
My husband is telling me,
Lillian, there's been an accident.
I say what?
Dennis has got an accident.
When I got to the hospital, he was comatose.
He was bleeding from the nose,
bleeding from the ears.
I just touched his lower limb and then I just said
a silent prayer and then they just
took me away and took me to another room.
>> Hello. Good morning, everybody.
>> Good morning.
>> All right. Are you ready to do this?
All right, I'm ready too.
>> In 2020 summer,
I fell from two story high and I hit
my head against the other side of
another building and then fell on the ground on my stomach.
My skull did crack and I had emergency surgery in Tanzania,
but eventually I needed more.
>> The neurosurgeon in Tanzania Africa did
a remarkable job saving his life and had to
remove 45 percent of his skull in order to
allow the brain to have room for swelling.
That life-saving surgery of removing pretty much half
his skull helped his brain survive,
but it left him with multiple complications.
>> When I first met Dennis,
it was very apparent that his road to recovery had been stalled.
Because his surgery was on an emergency basis,
he didn't have the good wound healing that should
be expected of someone who is young and healthy like Dennis.
His bone was resorbing,
meaning the bone was not as strong
as it used to be and it was going away.
As a result, it became obvious to anyone who looked at
him that there was a very
severe indentation on the side of his head.
>> We explained that we thought the safest way
to do it would be two surgeries.
The first surgery is really damage control.
Remove the bone, wash everything out.
Figure out what type of bacteria is sitting in there.
Put them on the right antibiotics.
This was not easy for Dennis.
It was not easy for his family.
But he's a trooper and he's very strong,
and he knew this was the right journey for him.
He agreed to go through this two stage operation.
We removed the bone, we identified the bacteria,
we treated him for six weeks,
and then we designed him a custom implant using a computer.
We were able to map out exactly the shape
that he needed to make him look like himself again.
>> What I couldn't do before the surgery? Everything really.
[MUSIC] From playing soccer,
From working out in the gym,
I basically took a whole year off of school.
I didn't like how I looked,
so I always either used to wear my durag or a hat.
I was trying to hide it from the world basically.
After the second surgery, I would say it was
the best thing I've ever had in terms of
just having that freedom again, I guess,
and just being able to not be
insecure about the way I look anymore is very
nice and I'm so grateful
to people in the medical department
everywhere in the world because,
yeah, they're the ones that made me live another life.
>> My personal goal with
all these patients in neuroplastic surgery, just like Dennis,
is to restore them in a way that allows them to forget about
me and the care team that provided neuroplastic surgery.
Because that is a sign of success.
That they can look in the mirror and forget that they
lost half their skull or they fell 15 feet.
If we can do that, then we're
achieving the mission of Johns Hopkins.
>> Hello, Dennis.
>> Hi, mommy.
>> How is everybody there?
>> They were good. Mommy, can you share your full face, please?
>> Okay.
>> Smile.
>> Why?
>> Guys, and this is my queen, honestly.
Yes, she's my queen and I'm going to make sure I make her proud.
>> Thank you Dennis.
>> I love you.
>> You guy.
[MUSIC]