EX-VALLEY DOC NOW FIXES RUINED FACES.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

They still ask about him, wondering how Dr. Hale is doing.

"Great," Dr. James Jensvold tells Hale's former patients. "Absolutely great."

It was Jensvold who took in many of his friend's patients in 2005, when the noted oral surgeon walked away from his successful Woodland Hills practice.

He joined the Army to teach young interns at Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio -- the military's level-one trauma center -- how to reconstruct the shattered faces of injured young service members coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

He didn't have to go. As I wrote in a Feb. 15, 2005, column, Hale had just come home after a year's tour in Afghanistan with an Army Reserve MASH unit -- spending 18-hour days digging out pieces of shrapnel and reconstructing shattered jaws.

He was 48, in the prime of his career. He had a wife, two young sons and a successful, private oral surgery practice. Hale was held in such high esteem, the 1,300-member San Fernando Valley Dental Society elected him president.

But he walked away from it all.

When you've lived for a year with soldiers who have lost most of their face, cried with them and done everything humanly possible to help them, how do you come home to a life of pulling wisdom teeth and implanting dental work?

You don't. You raise your right hand and volunteer for active duty because you have unique skills your country desperately needs.

You tell your wife to put the house up for sale, tell your two young sons they'll be going to a new school in the fall.

They don't complain. They just pack up and follow you across the country a few months later to a trauma center where military doctors and researchers spend every waking minute devoted to combat casualty care.

"The boys know Dad's doing something very important for his country," Hale's wife, Sue Ellen, told me in 2005 when Bob was packing to leave again.

"We knew Afghanistan was a life-changing event for him, and that whatever happened after he came home had a reason beyond our control."

Hale told me Wednesday by phone that his family is doing great, although they miss Southern California's weather.

"San Antonio is muggy and hot," he said, laughing. "Tyler's 16 now, and Austin is 14. They're in high school and want to become doctors one day.

"I'm so proud of my family for all the sacrifices they've made for me to be here."

Hale was attending a medical conference in Tampa, Fla., on face transplants -- the future for soldiers who have received severe burns and head wounds.

"This is not bizarre Hollywood stuff," he said, taking a break from the meetings. "Someday, we will be doing face transplants."

He talked of severely burned faces that couldn't be covered with other skin from the soldier's own body. They needed skin from donors the right age with the right skin color. Then the donor's skin was hooked up with the soldier's vessels and nerves.

It's called a vascularized skin flap, and it comes with a high risk of infection and tumors, Hale said.

At the University of Pittsburgh, the Cleveland Clinic and Brook, researchers are testing new medications to train the immune system to accept and tolerate the associated pain.

Current medicines to suppress the immune system are causing soldiers severe headaches, and finding new medications soon is key.

"This war on terrorism is shifting from Iraq to Afghanistan, and now there's fighting going on in Georgia. Sadly, I don't think there will be a time in the immediate future when we can look around and not see a war somewhere," Hale said.

"People are targeting us, using weapons they know will hurt our initiative. More than 30 percent of all injuries to our soldiers are to the head and neck area, more than any previous war.

"It's less small-arms fire and more explosive devices. The body armor protects them from serious chest injuries, but they're showing up with more mangled faces."

And when they do, Hale and his interns are there to reconstruct those faces as best they can.

"You ever have second thoughts about walking away from your successful private practice?" I asked him.

"Never," the recently promoted Col. Robert Hale said.

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Photo:

(1 -- 2) Oral surgeon Robert Hale poses with wife Sue Ellen and sons Austin and Tyler in this 2005 photo. Below right is a photo Hale shared, showing him on duty in the Army.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer