Shamika Burrage lost her left ear on a highway in Odessa, Texas.
In 2016, she was driving back to Fort Bliss after visiting her family in Mississippi when a tire blew out. The car skidded about 210 meters, rolled over several times, and she was thrown from it. Her cousin, who was riding in the passenger seat, suffered only minor injuries. She was left with head injuries, fractures in her spine, and no ear. Doctors later told her that if she had gone 30 more minutes without medical attention, she would have bled to death.
Two years later, surgeons at William Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso proposed something that left her speechless. They extracted cartilage from one of her ribs, sculpted it into a new ear, and grew it beneath the skin of her forearm. There, it developed its own blood vessels. They then transplanted it onto her head. It will be an ear with arteries, veins, and even nerves, and according to doctors, she will be able to feel it. Her case was the first time this technique had been used in the Army.
