Face to Face: True stories of life, death and transformation from my career as a facial surgeon

Think how much of your identity and sense of self is vested in the face you see in the bathroom mirror every morning. Now imagine that face being so ravaged by cancer, an accident, a fall, a beating, a car crash or a gunshot wound that it is barely recognizable.Now imagine how it might feel if, after surgery, the person you remember, but had given up all hope of seeing again, is looking back at you from the mirror once more.Over the years, maxillofacial surgeon Jim McCaul has helped countless individuals make this journey. This extraordinary book follows the stories of some of these patients whom he has saved from terrible illness and life-changing injuries – and some he wasn’t able to. We follow the epic and complex surgical procedures his job requires him to perform daily, where the margin for error is to all intents and purposes zero.Face to Face takes us on a journey which includes the most high-tech and complex of microsurgical procedures as well as the facial reconstruction techniques pioneered during the First World War. But at its heart are the human stories of the patients for whom this treatment is often quite literally a matter of life and death.