How many times a day do you look at your face in the mirror?

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How often do you fixate on what you might see as an imperfection, and wish you could change it?

It's something we take for granted, this face in the mirror.

Until one day, the face suddenly changes, dramatically and horribly.

Or perhaps some wish for a less ordinary, and more remarkable face - perfect symmetry, an aquiline nose, smooth cheeks.

If any of these most functional features were to suddenly be taken away, and replaced with a hole, a dent, a gap, it's impossible to adequately explain how fundamentally the sense of self would be altered.

A story by Megan Doherty this week is a reminder of how many people don't have the luxury of an unremarkable face.

Whose disfigurements, often caused by head and neck cancer, are a constant source of emotional pain and distress, never mind the physical toll of cancer, surgery and repair.

It's a curious imbalance in our health system's approach to physical disfigurements that Australians who need a breast or limb prosthesis after surgery or injury have access to funding support from the commonwealth government.

But those who need a facial prosthesis are often unable to afford one.

A prosthesis to cover a hole in the cheek, a caved-in nose, a missing eye, on the part of the body most visible, is more often than not a cost too large for a patient to........

© Canberra Times