Gun purchase waiting periods and other laws reduce gun deaths among youth
Certain gun regulations, such as safe storage and waiting period mandates, have reduced firearm-related suicides among youth.
Eight years after a shotgun blast destroyed most of his face, Amedi Dewey sat in a hospital bed waiting to be cut open again.
The blue gown, the fluorescent lights, the IV drip on her arm were all familiar. Since surviving a murder-suicide in 2018, she has undergone nearly 40 surgeries to repair the damage.
My anxiety never eased, but this surgery felt different.
If all goes as planned, a team of surgeons at Northwell Health Lenox Hill Hospital will reconstruct her jaw, repair her teeth and give her a new left eye. The doctors donated their time and the cost of the surgery was supported by NextGenFace, a nonprofit organization that helps patients with craniofacial diseases. Dewey’s story was previously documented in a five-part series in the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network.
For Dewey, now 26, it was a chance to finally redeem himself.
“It’s been years since surgery after surgery, when will it be over?” Dewey asked. “The heaviness is the same as the anxiety and fear of, ‘Oh my God, is this going to last this long?'”
Dewey was an 18-year-old high school senior when his stepfather, David Summers, shot him in the face, killed his mother, Lisa Summers, and then turned the gun on himself. The shotgun bullet destroyed her left eye socket, shattered the roof of her mouth, and caused severe damage to her optic nerve, vision, nose, and upper lip.
On that frigid January night, as police spent hours picking up pieces of her teeth and face from the highway, there was no clear path forward.
“They kept telling each other, essentially, I wasn’t going to make it,” Dewey says. “They were totally confused when I did that.”
According to the Everytown Gun Safety Fund, firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States. Approximately 22,000 youth are shot and killed or injured each year. For those who survive firearm injuries, recovery can require years of surgery, chronic pain, and expensive treatment.
Exposure to gun violence is associated with numerous mental health problems. Survivors are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Experts say elements of recovery, including during surgeries like Dewey’s, can be re-traumatic for years afterward.
“Patients don’t know when it’s going to happen,” said David Hirsch, one of the surgeons who led Dewey’s facial reconstruction. He is Northwell Health’s senior vice president of dentistry and director of oral and maxillofacial surgery. “When you take them to the hospital, they see something and all of a sudden a flood of emotions comes back. It can be very difficult.”
The psychological cost of surviving a gunshot wound
Dewey never tried to hide his scars.
On her prom night, just three months after the incident, she chose a dark blue dress with billowing beads, similar to the princess dresses she had seen in the movies, and asked her hairdresser to style her brunette hair half-up, half-down.
“Don’t hide me,” she remembers telling the makeup artist. “These are battle scars and I’m not ashamed of them. I wear them and I wear them with pride.”
In her small town, where she was one of 99 graduates, a supportive community quickly adapted to Dewey’s physical changes. But with strangers it was even more difficult. Later, when she went out to a bar for the first time, a girl covered her left eye and pointed at her. Another called her a “pig nose” and a man told her she was “offended by wearing makeup.”
There were people who treated her like a glass figurine that would shatter with just a touch, and strangers who inappropriately blurted out, “Oh my god, I’m sorry.”
Dewey was an adrenaline junkie who loved roller coasters, grew up around the antics of his two loud older brothers, hated going down muddy back roads, and hated their pity. She chalked up Barr’s rant to drunken stupidity and other comments to well-intentioned ignorance.
But that didn’t mean they weren’t hurt. She avoided mirrors at home for years.
“Just because I got shot doesn’t make me weak,” Dewey says. “It took me years to develop the patience to not get upset.”
“How are we going to help Amedi get through this?”
But even more frustrating were the physical challenges.
As her weight fluctuated, her mouth changed with it. Her dentures no longer fit and she is left without any teeth. Her diet consisted primarily of mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and finely diced chicken.
Something as simple as trying to eat a hamburger became a huge ordeal.
Hirsch said his team doesn’t often operate on facial gunshot wounds because most people shot in the face don’t survive.
“When we met her, she was really positive,” Hirsch says. “For me, the resilience of this human being was just amazing.”
Facial reconstructive surgery presents challenges in many ways, Hirsch said. In Dewey’s case, surgeons had to look through extensive scar tissue to find blood vessels further away from his face.
Mental health issues were similarly complex. Patients who have undergone multiple surgeries can bring significant emotional trauma to the operating room, often because previous surgeries did not yield the desired results.
“What is the patient’s mental state? And does he have severe PTSD that makes it difficult for us to accomplish our goals?” Hirsch says. “How are we going to help Amedi get through this?”
Dewey underwent at least 15 facial surgeries in the two months after the shooting, and later underwent more extensive surgery at the University of Michigan. The procedure blurred over the years as surgeons tried to repair the damage and prepare her eye socket for a prosthetic eye.
The team at Lenox Hill, which specializes in complex facial reconstruction, believed there was more that could be done. In addition to Dr. Hirsch, this initiative brings together a multidisciplinary Lenox Hill Hospital team, including Dr. Brett Miles, vice president and chief of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery, Lawrence Brecht, MD, director of maxillofacial prosthetics, and Charles Thorne, MD, chief of plastic surgery.
Over three surgeries, the team used bone from Dewey’s lower legs to reconstruct her upper jaw, implement a series of prosthetic teeth, and insert special implants into her eye sockets to support future prosthetics. After three months of healing, he was fitted with a custom-made orbital prosthesis on June 4th.
“We basically said, ‘Let’s rebuild the entire upper jaw. That’s going to be the basis for the protrusion of the cheekbones, support for the lower eye area, and support for the mouth and teeth,'” Hirsch says.
No one looks twice at Dewey these days.
Last week, when she went to town to run some errands, a local shopkeeper told her that he had noticed Dewey’s cheerful personality. Another friend saw her and told her, “You’re coming back.”
Ms Dewey said she was still on a journey of self-healing and was “battling” with herself “internally” and “mentally”. But she has shown improvement over the years and has worked to raise awareness about gun violence and mental health. June is Gun Violence Awareness Month.
“I’m screaming about mental health because no one talks about it,” Dewey says.
This summer, she is volunteering at a myFace retreat for children living with craniofacial differences.
Her external healing also helped her.
“I look in the mirror and just smile. I’m so happy,” Dewey says. “It’s finally coming together.”
Read the first chapter of a five-part series in which Detroit Free Press columnist Jeff Seidel tells the story of Amedi Dewey., here.
If you or a loved one is experiencing domestic violence, you can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Text START to 88788, call 800-799-SAFE (7233) or chat at thehotline.org.
Rachel Hale’s role covering youth mental health for USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Contact her at rhale@usatoday.com. @rachleighhale At X.
