When Chrissy Steltz agreed to cohost a spring break house party in March 1999, she had no idea that by the end of the night, she would be missing part of her face.
“It’s spring break,” Steltz recalled. “We’re all, you know, doing what teenagers shouldn’t be, you know, drinking. And I went into the back room and offered them orange juice, and I saw one of my friends with the shotgun.”
She told the guy to “put that down before you kill somebody,” but he responded by saying “It’s not loaded.”
Sure enough, the gun was loaded, and Steltz ended up getting accidentally shot at point blank range.
Will O’Brien, Steltz’s boyfriend at the time, found her a few minutes later.
“I don’t know if you have ever seen like a wounded animal trying to get up?” O’Brien said. “That’s what I saw. I saw an injury that nobody survives, except somebody really strong. And she was trying to get up.”
Steltz was rushed to the hospital, where doctors found that three quarters of her face was destroyed. Though doctors were able to save her life, they were not able to save her nose and eyes.
“The blast itself removed the contents of her left eye socket, removed her nose and the supporting mid-facial structures and damaged her right eye to the extent that she lost vision,” said Dr. Eric Dierks.
Steltz was placed in a drug-induced coma as her family hoped for the best. They knew that she would have some brain damage, but they would not know the extent until she woke up. Dr. Dierks said that he has never “seen anything so severe where the patient lived.”
Steltz regained consciousness six weeks later and began her long road to recovery.
“The first thing I remember is waking up in a hospital and asking if we were there yet,” she said. “In my mind, mentally, I was on a trip to the beach with my family. I thought I’d fallen asleep in the back seat of the car.”
Steltz was stunned when she was told how severe her injuries were and that she would never see or smell again.
“When I finally knew what had happened to me and that I had lost my sight and that it would never be coming back,” said Steltz. “I knew I could sit back and have a pity party, or I could figure out what to do and go about doing it, and that’s exactly what I did.”
Steltz and O’Brien ended up breaking up, but while attending a school for the blind, she met a man named Geoffrey Dilger, who had lost his vision at the age of 16 due to illness. The two quickly fell in love, and they’ve been together ever since! The two even have a child together, a baby they named Geoffrey, after his father.
“I kind of look at little Geoffrey as like life, you know?” said Steltz. “You’re either going to grab it by the boots and go or you’re going to sit there and not know what to do. So I grabbed it by the boots and I was ready to go.”
Back in 2010, after spending 11 years wearing a sleep mask at all times, doctors were finally able to make a prosthetic face for Steltz. Using photos of her when she was 16, the doctors made a mask that looked just like Steltz had! A team of experienced doctors removed the damaged tissue, created a breathing passage, and added dental implants into her facial bones. The doctors also used skin grafts, bone from Steltz’s left leg, as well as screws and metal plates, so the mask can come on and off with ease.
The results can only be described as amazing!
When Steltz debuted her new face at the mall, she could feel the amount of stares decline.
“There were times I could definitely feel people’s eyes staring at me,” she said. “So I don’t need to worry about people looking at me and noticing me for the sleep shade, I can know that they’re looking at me and noticing me for who I am.”
In the end, Steltz does not want people to feel sorry for her.
“When anybody finds out how I went blind, their first comment 99 percent of the time is, ‘I’m sorry.’ And my response to that is: I’m not. I lived,” she said. “There’s nothing to be sorry about living through something like that. Don’t be sorry for me. Be happy for me. Be proud of the fact that I have gone on with my life.”
What an inspirational woman! Find out more about Chrissy Steltz in the video below, and SHARE this story so your friends and family can see this as well!