She survived being shot in the face as a teen. Then came nearly 40 surgeries.

Eight years after a shotgun destroyed much of her face, Amedy Dewey sat in a hospital bed waiting to be cut open again.

The blue gown, fluorescent lights and IV taped to her arm were all familiar. Since surviving a murder-suicide in 2018, she had undergone nearly 40 surgeries to repair the damage.

The anxiety never got easier, but this operation felt different.

If all went according to plan, the team of surgeons at Northwell Health’s Lenox Hill Hospital would rebuild her jaw, restore her teeth and give her a new left eye. The doctors donated their time, while surgery costs were supported by NextGenFace, a nonprofit that supports patients with craniofacial conditions. Dewey's story was previously documented in a five-part series from the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network.

For Dewey, now 26, it was a chance to finally feel like herself again.

“Years of surgery after surgery after surgery, like, when is it gonna be done?” Dewey asked. “The weight, like the anxiety, the fear that, ‘oh my God, I'm gonna be in pain for this long.’” 

Dewey was an 18-year-old high school senior when her stepfather, David Somers, shot her in the face and killed her mother, Lisa Somers, before turning the gun on himself. The shotgun pellets destroyed her left eye socket, shattered the roof of her mouth, and profusely damaged her optic nerve, eyesight, nose and upper lip.

That frigid January night, as police spent hours picking up pieces of her teeth and face off of the highway, there was no clear path forward in sight.

“They kept telling each other, essentially I'm not gonna make it,” Dewey says. “When I did, they were absolutely just baffled.”

Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States, according to Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. Each year, nearly 22,000 adolescents are shot and killed or wounded. For those who survive firearm injuries, recovery can involve years of surgeries, chronic pain and costly medical treatment.

Exposure to gun violence is associated with a litany of mental health issues. Survivors are more likely to struggle with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Experts say elements of recovery can be retraumatizing for years afterward, including during surgeries like the one Dewey underwent.

“A patient doesn't know when that's going to strike,” says David Hirsch, one of the surgeons who led Dewey’s facial reconstruction. He is the senior vice president of dental medicine and the chair of oral and maxillofacial surgery at Northwell Health. “You bring them to the hospital, they see something that all of a sudden a flood of emotions comes back, and it can be super difficult.”

The emotional toll of surviving a gunshot wound

Dewey never tried to hide the scars.

On her prom night, just three months after the incident, she picked out a beaded, dark blue dress that puffed out like the princess gowns she had seen in movies, and asked a hairdresser to swirl her brunette locks into a half-up half-down look. 

“Don’t cover me up,” she recalls telling the makeup artist. “These are battle scars, these are not shameful, I wear them, and I wear them proudly.”

In her small town, where she was one of 99 in her graduating class, a supportive community quickly adjusted to Dewey’s physical changes. But with strangers, it was harder. The first time she went out to a bar afterward, a girl covered her left eye and pointed at her. Another called her “pig nose,” and a man told her she was “offending makeup by wearing it.”

There were also those who treated her like a glass ornament that could break with one touch, and the strangers who would unwarrantedly blurt out, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

Dewey, an adrenaline junky who loves roller coasters, grew up with the antics of two boisterous older brothers and goes mud bogging down back roads, hated that pity. She chalked up the bar barbs to drunken stupidity and the other comments as well-intentioned ignorance. 

But that didn’t mean they didn’t hurt. For years, she avoided the mirrors in her house. 

“Just because I got shot, doesn't mean to treat me fragile,” Dewey says. “It took me a lot of years to have the patience to not get upset.”

‘How are we going to help Amedy get through this?’

More frustrating, though, were the physical challenges. 

When her weight fluctuated, her mouth changed with it. Her dentures stopped fitting, and there was a point where she didn’t have teeth at all. Her diet consisted primarily of mashed potatoes, mac and cheese and finely diced chicken cubes. 

Something as simple as trying to eat a burger became a herculean ordeal.

Hirsch says his team doesn’t operate on a lot of facial gunshot wounds, because most people who are shot in the face don’t live.

“When we met her, she was really positive,” Hirsch says. “It was just amazing to me, the resilience that this human being could have.”

Reconstructive facial surgery presents challenges on multiple fronts, Hirsch says. In Dewey's case, surgeons had to work through extensive scar tissue and find blood vessels farther from the face. 

The mental health piece was just as complicated. Patients who have undergone multiple surgeries, often because earlier procedures failed to deliver the desired outcome, can carry significant emotional trauma into the operating room.

“How is the patient emotionally, and is she having so much PTSD that it is going to be difficult to achieve our objectives?” Hirsch says. “How are we going to help Amedy get through this?”

Dewey underwent at least 15 facial surgeries in the two months after the shooting, followed by more major operations at the University of Michigan. The procedures blurred together over the years as surgeons repaired damage and attempted to prepare her eye socket for a prosthetic eye.

The team at Lenox Hill, which specializes in complex facial reconstruction, believed there was still more they could do. The effort brought together a multidisciplinary Lenox Hill Hospital team that alongside Hirsch included Dr. Brett Miles, vice president and chair of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery, Dr. Lawrence Brecht, director of maxillofacial prosthetics, and Dr. Charles Thorne, chair of plastic surgery.

Over three surgeries, the team used bone from Dewey’s lower leg to rebuild her upper jaw, implemented a set of prosthetic teeth and inserted specialized implants into her eye socket to support a future prosthesis. After three months of healing, they fitted a custom orbital prosthesis on June 4.

“We basically said, ‘Let's rebuild the entire upper jaw, and that'll be your foundation for the projection of the cheekbones, the support for the lower part of the eye, and also the support for the mouth and the teeth,’” Hirsch says.

These days, people don’t do a double take when they see Dewey.

Last week, when she went out to run errands around town, a local store owner told her she’d noticed Dewey’s upbeat disposition. “You are coming back,” another friend told her when she saw her.

Dewey says she’s still on a self-healing journey, and still “battling” with herself “internally” and “mentally.” But each year she’s seen improvement, and she’s worked to raise awareness about gun violence and mental health. June is gun violence awareness month.

“I scream for mental health, because nobody talks about it,” Dewey says.

This summer, she’s volunteering at a retreat with myFace for kids living with craniofacial differences. 

Her outer healing has helped her, too. 

“I look in the mirror, and I just smile, and I'm so happy,” Dewey says. “It's finally coming together.”

Read the first chapter in the five-part series in which Detroit Free Press columnist Jeff Seidel shares Amedy Dewey's story, 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 at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

Reach her at [email protected] and@rachelleighhale on X.