Timothy

 “[When I just received the prosthesis] I also touched it constantly. I thought, ‘would that that thing doesn’t fall out’, I also didn’t trust it, to be frank. I thought, ‘well, it would never stay put’, or ‘when I talk for a bit (…) it dropped out already’, or ‘I eat and it falls out’. (…) [I] often touched my left hand to my face, just to feel whether [the prosthesis] was still in there.”“(…) during the day, while we have been talking now, I’ve probably done this [presses the prosthesis into place] twice already. (…) Because I still am afraid that I then [when I] talk a lot, that it would let go.”

Timothy wears a prosthesis over the scarred and hollowed-out area in the left side of his face.He was interviewed for our study on how people experience and deal with facial prostheses (or epitheses).