Twenty years ago, Elaine Ferri, 51, was a young horse trainer at Monmouth Park Racetrack in Oceanport New Jersey. Elaine who now lives in Arkansas trained horses at Monmouth Park for over a decade.
On July 8, 2007, Elaine was working with a 4-year- old filly. The horse became frightened and kicked Elaine in the face shattering all of the bones on the left side. For two weeks after the accident doctors in Arkansas performed numerous operations attempting to reconstruct her face and save her left eye. Unfortunately she eventually lost her left eye. Due to her lack of health insurance, the medical bills piled up, and she was ultimately discharged from the hospital.
Elaine was in pain and looked terrible and had nowhere to turn. She turned to her old home on the Jersey Shore in Monmouth County New Jersey ,and contacted the physicians at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, Neptune New Jersey. A complete surgical team was organized consisting of Dr. Stephen A. Chidyllo, a board certified plastic surgeon with speciality training in the fields of Craniomaxillofacial Surgery, Dr. Angelo Chinnici, internist and Dr. Barry Edison, ophthalmologist. All of the above physicians along with Jersey Shore University Medical Center donated their time, efforts and finances.
On May 21, 2008 Elaine underwent a five hour surgery in which all of the previously broken bones on the left side of her face were repositioned and fixed in a more anatomically correct position. Missing bone was replaced with modern state of the art facial implants which recontoured her left cheek and left temporal region. She spent six days in the hospital and was followed by Dr. Chidyllo after discharge for another month. She returned to her family home in Arkansas and looks forward to her follow up visit with Dr. Chidyllo in November 2008.
