Aliz Cservenak can breathe through her nose, an act most of us don’t even notice and probably take for granted.
The 13-year-old will enter sixth grade in September in her native Hungary, where she has friends and where she likes to go shopping and to the coffee shop.
“I have a normal life,” the teen said in English as she sat in a patient room at her plastic surgeon’s office in Bloomfield Hills on Aug. 5, a little more than a week after she had surgical refinements following major facial reconstruction surgery four years ago.
Her family says they have Dr. Kongkrit Chaiyasate, who Aliz greeted with a huge hug, to thank for that.
“Dr. C isn’t just a surgeon for us, but a friend. He’s a part of our family, and we’re super grateful for him. He’s the best,” said Lili Misúr, Aliz’s older sister.
“And no one helped us in Hungary, and we completely lost hope,” Misúr recalled of a time four years ago. “And we just sent him an email, and after like 30 minutes, he replied. He gave back our hope … And he gave back a life, and it’s amazing, and I don’t think that anyone would be able to do the things that he does.”
“(Aliz is) able to go to the street or to public places because now no one looks at her like they did before. Dr. C gave back her childhood and her confidence and everything.”
The Free Press shared Aliz’ story in 2022 after she underwent two surgeries, with more after, by Chaiyasate, who restored some of her facial features after a severe infection set in while Aliz was hospitalized for chemotherapy battling cancer in Hungary.
At that time, she had spent more than half of her life in a hospital in Hungary fighting cancer. During an extended stay in a hospital there, she contracted a severe infection called mucormycosis. It caused disintegration of the bones in her nose and face. As a result, she lost her nose, part of her palate and upper jaw.
Doctors in Hungary told the family they would only perform plastic surgery on someone age 18 or older. So the family took to the internet and reached out to Chaiyasate in the U.S.
After initial surgeries in 2022, Aliz, then 9 and who spoke Hungarian, could finally drink with a straw and whistle. Food and drinks stopped coming out of her nose. Her last surgery in the U.S. was in 2023, Misúr said.
While Aliz had a graft procedure a couple of years ago in Europe, Chaiyasate said, her recent return to metro Detroit was for a two-hour surgery for skin grafts to create the structure of her nose. He said a little skin graft from her hip was used to create an upper lip.
Misúr said her sister is “super, super happy. She can see the bone in her nose and it’s almost a perfect and normal nose.”
Chaiyasate said this recent procedure should set up Aliz for the next couple of years, until she is 15 or 16, when she can have additional revisions because she will have outgrown the work he did. After that, he said, she probably will undergo aesthetic surgery for adjustments as she ages.
“Everything looks great,” Chaiyasate said after examining Aliz during her post-surgical visit at his private practice. “Finally, I was able to open up her nostril. Before she couldn’t breathe; now she can.”
He said the recent procedure was “not sophisticated,” but touching up the work from four years ago that she outgrew. She had six surgeries back then, one major one and five others. Now, he said, Aliz just has to keep the nostril that he cleared open.
During the visit, he put a nasal stent − a small plastic tube − inside her right nostril to keep it open. He said she has no restrictions and the stent can be cleaned and reused. Right now, he wants her to wear it regularly and at night when she goes to school, saying she needs to wear it for “many, many months.”
“It’s not super convenient, but it gets the job done,” he said after snipping off the tip of the stent and inserting it inside her nostril.
Aliz said she could feel something in her nose, but indicated that she could breathe better with the stent.
Dr. Fabian Fregoli, chief medical officer and president of Trinity Health Oakland Hospital in Pontiac, said the hospital supported this refinement surgery, which occurred after Chaiyasate got his privileges for surgery with the health system this year. He said it provided surgical time, pre- and post-operative services, and anesthesia.
“We’re so, so happy that we could help. Trinity Health … we’re a faith-based organization, very driven on our mission. And this was very much aligned with the work that we do in the mission, that we follow in health care,” Fregoli said, adding it would be glad to support Chaiyasate and Aliz as she goes through this journey in the future.
Fregoli said the nursing staff also pitched in to have Crumbl cookies delivered to the hospital for Aliz when she woke up from surgery, as she and her family wanted to try them. They couldn’t get them the night before the surgery, he said, as the shop was closed, so during the surgery a member of the nursing staff had them delivered.
“It just warmed my heart to see that this is something that the staff did all on their own,” he said. “It made a little bit of a difference (for) a young lady going through a procedure.”
The family stayed at the Ronald McDonald House of Detroit and visited some of the city’s highlights, including one of their favorite spots, the Detroit RiverWalk, during their approximately three-week stay.
Chaiyasate said as a plastic surgeon, he restores not only the aesthetic element, but also form and function. In this case, he said, Aliz makes his job easy.
“The strength from her is inside,” he said. “She is beautiful inside … A great, strong young lady.”
Contact Christina Hall: chall@freepress.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @challreporter.
Support local journalism. Subscribe to the Free Press.
Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan doctor gives Hungarian teen ‘normal life’ in facial surgeries
Reporting by Christina Hall, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Christina Hall, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
