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Daily Times-Call on Sunday. Oct. 13, 2002 New life Plus, they weren’t “huggable,” explained Barbara Spohn - Lillo , a Stanford University-trained, certified anaplastologist and ocularist who owns Prosthetic Illusions, formerly known as Rocky Mountain Anaplastology Inc., in Littleton. Spohn - Lillo has spent the past 21 years furthering her father’s legacy of creating and painting artificial eyes and other facial prosthetics for people disfigured by trauma, birth defects or disease. But in 2002, she expanded her esoteric work — an intimate marriage of art and science — to prosthetic breasts by partnering with Radiant Impressions, a cottage industry that cropped up in Louisville, Ky. To bring a custom breast into being, Spohn - Lillo said, she first casts a mold, either a mirror image of the remaining breast or an original of what would fit the woman’s now-flat figure. She then typically types two pages of descriptions before sending the order to Kentucky for manufacture. The details, according to Spohn - Lillo , 44, include anything that would contribute to the most realistic breast prosthesis — namely, shape, drape and slope as well as nipple height and orientation. However, those particulars pale next to the finishing touches that make a shiny, neutral-toned silicone breast form appear as flesh. Besides matching general skin tone, Spohn - Lillo paints them with everything from freckles to veins to moles. For all these reasons, she said, the Radiant Impression breast forms represent a next-generation product for breast cancer survivors living with single and double mastectomies. Unlike the heavy, old-school breast forms that required pocketing in a special bra, she said, the newest forms are more breathable, puncture-resistant, light weight and washable. At $2,400 per breast, they also are more affordable than other customized breast forms, which can run up to $4,800 each, according to Spohn - Lillo. Furthermore, the Radiant Impressions breast prostheses conform well enough to a woman’s rib cage so as to be worn with or without adhesive in everyday lingerie. Still, some outside the cancer community might puzzle over Spohn - Lillo ’s aesthetic enterprises on body parts usually under wraps. “But the person who’s wearing it is looking in the mirror, and she wants to feel whole again,” she explained. “Cosmetic surgery makes you look better than normal. (Exterior) reconstruction just makes you look normal.” For some survivors, normal can be painfully elusive. That’s what prompted retired orthodontist and Radiant Impressions founder Dr. Terry Ferguson to test chemicals in his kitchen crockpot. After his wife, Frances, underwent a single mastectomy in 2000, the couple said, too few options for normalcy existed. Reconstructive surgery proved too lengthy and painful, and heavy, ill-fitting gel breast shapes never fit skin tight or looked quite right. Trial and error ultimately led Ferguson to manufacture the patent-pending foam silicone breast forms that today make Spohn - Lillo ’s curvaceous canvas. She is the only person in Colorado with a Radiant Impressions contract and one of just three statewide who make facial prosthesis. A visit to her home office in Littleton graphically displays professional pursuits beyond breasts. For instance, at a work table littered with prosthetic ears, eyes and noses, Spohn - Lillo spends her days in part stringing gossamer-thin strands of red silk around acrylic eye balls. She also patronizes local fly fishing shops for faux eyelash materials to apply, one by one, to the upper and lower lids of the silicone pieces she fits over faces disfigured around both eye and socket. The scene might be macabre but for the way it helps clients — from earless children to a man who blew his jaw and nose off in a suicide attempt — put their best face forward in the aftermath. “The goal is to be able to walk into a room and have people listen to what you say and not be distracted by how you look,” she said. In the United States, that is one social reward for prosthetic success in her back room. But during her past three volunteer service trips to Vietnam with the nonprofit Face the Challenge, she said, she discovered that disfigurement could connote much more. “If you look different, they think you have an evil spirit.
You become ostracized and become a beggar,” she explained.
That belief might not prevail here, but blind-from-birth Boulder
resident Gerry Leary said the eyes Spohn - Lillo designed for him
a year ago make a big difference in the way he interfaces with the
sighted world. Leary had his eyes surgically removed 10 months after
his birth. Born prematurely, hospital staff gave him too much oxygen
while he was in an incubator, which caused irreversible damage.
“It’s not necessarily dislike,” said Leary, 50. “It’s
fear. (Acrylic eyes) help you to be easier for society to accept.”
In his case, that acceptance is public. But Spohn - Lillo said private
acceptance can be just as important. That’s why she has couched
her professional standards in very personal terms. “If they
were my child or my spouse, would I do more? If the answer is ‘Yes,’
I will,” she said. According to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer
Foundation, approximately 205,000 cases of breast cancer will be
diagnosed in the United States this year. More than 1,500 mastectomies
were performed in Colorado in 2000. |