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OREM — An Orem man and his siblings are trying to raise funds to pay for surgery to replace their father's lower jaw after it was destroyed in an accident nearly four decades ago.
Riley Mauch said he has never seen his father, Vance Mauch, smile with bottom teeth. In November 1978, just two days before Thanksgiving, Vance Mauch went into his family home in American Falls, Idaho, after doing farm chores. He began walking upstairs and was accidentally shot in the face by his brother with a shotgun. The blast from the shot tore off the majority of his bottom jaw, Riley Mauch said.
"He fired the shot, and my dad, he woke up in the kitchen a few minutes later," Riley Mauch said. "His brother had wrapped him up with some towels. … He had no blood pressure or pulse because he had lost so much blood."
Vance Mauch was transported to a hospital in American Falls and then to Pocatello for a 14-hour emergency surgery. His life was saved and he married the next year and eventually moved to Utah from Idaho. But the accident spurred years of reconstructive surgeries with doctors initially using one of Vance Mauch's ribs to shape a new lower jaw.
"He just lived with it since the accident and there wasn't really any complications, up until 2008, when the original bone from his ribs started to fail and it started to break," Riley Mauch said. "They would put in a bar along that bone to make it sturdy so that it wouldn't break, but it was just so deteriorated that it would continue to break."
After several more surgeries and failed attempts, doctors decided to take 9 inches of Vance Mauch's fibula to recreate a new bottom jaw in 2013. However, scar tissue that had built up over the years blocked the blood supply to his jaw and the bone graft died, Riley Mauch said. His new lower jaw had to be amputated in 2014.
"We've lost count of how many surgeries he's had," Riley Mauch said. "Skin graft after skin graft after skin graft to just continue to build up a jaw line, and it just continued to fail because the blood would clot on the grafts and it just wasn't working."
Despite all the surgeries and feeling self-conscious in public, Riley Mauch said his father has worked hard and remained positive over the years. He said his father and his uncle are still great friends and Vance Mauch doesn't have any hard feelings about the accident.
Riley Mauch said his father saw a specialist Tuesday and doctors believe they can do a new procedure and use the scar tissue to create a new bottom jaw. However, he said their insurance wouldn't cover all the costs of the medical procedure so he and his siblings created a GoFundMe campaign* to give back to their dad.
"If anyone deserves this, it's him," Riley Mauch said. "This is our way of saying thanks and trying our best to make sure he gets back what he's been missing since the accident — and that's his smile."
Riley Mauch said the surgery will likely take place within the next couple months.
*KSL.com does not assure that the monies deposited to the account will be applied for the benefit of the persons named as beneficiaries. If you are considering a deposit to the account, you should consult your own advisors and otherwise proceed at your own risk.
