By

Don Colburn

Chrissy Steltz left the hospital late Tuesday wearing the same black sleep shade she has worn in public since an accidental shotgun blast nearly 11 years ago blew away her eyesight, nose and cheeks.

But this time, the mask covered not just her facial scars, but also the caps of eight dental implants poking out of the skin around her vacant eye sockets. The titanium implants will serve as "footings" for a facial prosthesis, including acrylic eyes and a realistic nose, that Steltz hopes to start wearing this summer.

In a three-hour operation at

, a surgical team led by Dr. Eric Dierks drilled the implants into bones above and below her eye sockets. The implants take at least four months to fuse with the bone.

The prosthesis, being designed and sculpted by Larry Over, a maxillofacial prosthodontist in Eugene, will snap onto the implant caps, held in place by tiny magnets. She had about 35 stitches in her face.

"It went well," Dierks said after surgery. "No unexpected findings. This was all good."

Chrissy Steltz

The only "hiccup," he said, was their inability to remove a metal plate inserted above her left eye in 1999. The new surgical screw removers do not fit the vintage-1999 screws on the plate -- so Dierks worked around it.

Steltz and her family, including her partner of seven years, Geoffrey Dilger, and their 6-month old son, arrived at Legacy Emanuel shortly after 5 a.m. Her parents, Jeannie and Ron Steltz, and her 10-year-old sister, Shyanne, also came.

Immediately before Steltz was wheeled into the operating room for anesthesia, Dierks met with her in a private waiting room.

"Any last-minute questions?" he asked.

"I'm ready," she replied.

"All right," he said. "Away we go."

Surgeons threaded eight screwlike implants into the bone around her eye sockets -- and one in her mouth to secure two new front teeth. They first drilled into the bone, squirting the high-speed drill with salt water to keep the bone from overheating. Then they screwed each implant into the bone and capped it with a "healing collar" to keep skin from healing over it. That's the part that pokes out of Steltz's face now.

Up to 22 people crowded around Steltz in the operating room. Besides Dierks, they included surgical and dental residents, an anesthesiologist, nurses, representatives of Zimmer Dental Inc., the implant maker, and teams from The Oregonian and ABC-TV's "20/20."

Most of the surgical team members stood on footstools to get a better view. Dierks, who stands 6 feet, 3 inches tall, needed no stool. X-rays on the wall highlighted the metal plates and bone grafts in her face and dozens of tiny white spots -- between 30 and 40 shotgun pellets still embedded in her head.

A red plastic model of Steltz's skull, made from CT scans after her original facial surgeries in 1999, lay on a surgical tray above her feet. From time to time, Dierks picked it up and held it next to her face, to help him place the implants exactly. It took about 35 stitches to close the incisions.

Eric Baker, Steve McKinstry/The Oregonian

Dierks and Over have collaborated on many facial reconstructions, mainly for people disfigured by cancer or gunfire, but Steltz's case is their most complex so far, because of the extent of her injuries.

Steltz, now 27, was 16 when she was shot in the face at a party in Southeast Portland. Police ruled it an accident. Half an inch farther back into her brain, Dierks said, it could have killed her.

On Monday, Steltz got a sense of how her prosthesis will look and feel when she met Lisa Glendinning, another patient of Dierks and Over. Glendinning, who lives near Dallas, lost her right eye to cancer and wore an eye patch for 12 years until last week. Now she has a prosthesis that fits over her right eye socket, including an acrylic eyeball, with a green-tinted iris that perfectly matches her seeing left eye.

"Do you want to feel it?" Glendinning asked Steltz during a visit to Dierks's office.

"Sure."

Glendinning guided Steltz's right index finger to the prosthesis. Later, she removed the prosthesis, so Steltz could hold it and feel the eyeball and lashes and silicone skin."That is sooooo interesting," Steltz said.

In sculpting Glendinning prosthesis, Over sealed it in makeup, "so I don't have to put makeup on that eye," she told Steltz.

Dierks expects to tweak Steltz' implants slightly, but foresees no more major surgery for Steltz before she tries on the prosthesis this summer.

"It's the end of one part of my life," Steltz said last week. "I'm excited. I'm looking forward to this whole process being finished so I can get on with life."

Her goal and her hope: "I won't be as noticed everywhere as I am now."

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