Houston Surgeon Turns Kids Into Superheroes Through Colorful Bandage Creations

Following what are typically intense surgical procedures, plastic surgeon Dr. Matthew Greives tries to make his pint-sized sufferers smile after they first look within the mirror.

“You make anyone smile and that is the perfect medication,” says Greives, 43, who’s chief of cosmetic surgery at each UT Well being Houston and Kids’s Memorial Hermann Hospital.

He makes a speciality of craniofacial reconstruction, working with kids who’ve trauma to their face or cranium, or congenital points with the mind, cranium or face.

After children have surgical procedure on their heads, they typically require a head wrap to cut back swelling and assist therapeutic. Normally it’s a boring gauze or ACE bandage — “nothing particular,” says Greives.

For a while, he would pull the ends as much as make bunny or teddy bear ears. However for the previous 5 years, he is kicked it up a notch, creating Minions, Spider-Man, Captain America, Flash, Batman and extra characters on children’ bandages.

“I actually like the truth that my complete staff will get into it,” he provides. “They’re all the time arising with new issues to strive.”

As a substitute of solely protecting up the surgical wound, he creates one thing thrilling that his sufferers really wish to take a look at, he says.

“The children and the households and the nurses now have this type of cool factor to refocus their consideration on … one thing to make them slightly happier,” he provides.

It is a option to make the expertise of being within the hospital extra enjoyable, and fewer scary. 

“You are taking one thing that is both scary or boring and medicine-y and making it extra kid-friendly,” Greives continues. “It is in search of alternatives so as to add slightly sunshine into something you are doing. We get so caught in medication with actually what we’ve to do, however you are able to do slightly bit extra and make an enormous distinction.”