STANLY COUNTY, N.C. — The human face can be our welcome card to the world.

It is one of the first things people notice, sometimes a smile is a defining feature. One Stanly County woman almost lost her trademark for good until she met a doctor at Duke, who helped her regain part of her smile again.

At some point over the last eight years, Rhonda Darby’s facial expressions began to change. She said she could not understand why.

“Of course, I have known about facial paralysis with people who have had strokes and people that have had tumors removed,” Darby said. 

Then Darby learned she also suffered from facial paralysis and the cause behind it. Darby said doctors found a non-cancerous tumor on her brain called an acoustic neuroma in 2016. 

 “I think when you first hear about you have a brain tumor, it’s just a panic,” she said.

The tumor was not deadly, but was strangling the nerves on the left side of her face. “I had to get the tumor out,” Darby said.

The tumor removal operation was in 2017. There were many unknowns she addressed as time ticked by.

Darby has made a lot of memories in Stanfield, a town where she has lived most of her life. She keeps some of those cherished moments with family and friends in scrapbooks at her house.

“Here are some good ones,” Darby said as she pointed to photos of herself before facial paralysis set in. To everyone else, she was the girl with the golden smile.

“Growing up, that was just a big part of growing up. Everyone knew me for my smile,” Darby said.

That warm, welcoming spirit remains, but it manifests differently these days. The left side of her face now droops a little. She says for a while after going under the knife; the paralysis looked more and more obvious.

“We just had to go forward and be positive about the outcomes, whether it did show some facial paralysis or did not. Unfortunately, in the very beginning, it was really bad,” she said.

The lifelong North Carolinian is used to other people noticing changes. She said some of the shining stars in her life, throughout good times and bad, when she needed unconditional support have been her grandchildren. The 55-year-old babysits her granddaughter Sawyer all the time. Time stands still when she holds her 9-month-old grandbaby in her arms.

“For sure. Oh, it’s an awesome experience. Any grandmother knows what it feels like,” she said. Her grandchildren call her Ra-Ra, their family’s take on grandmother. To them, she is a protector and loving figure in their lives. 

Darby has always wanted to be the best version of herself for everyone. Forming facial expressions felt impossible, and even drinking out of a cup was hard. Darby found herself on the hunt for a better quality of life.

“It’s still a daily struggle that we think about. It’s not going to be perfect,” she said.

She never gave up hope, however. Eventually, she found Dr. Dane Barrett, a trained plastic facial surgeon for Duke Health in Durham.

Barrett performed an operation that changed her life forever: a two-step facial reanimation surgery. 

He said part of step one in the procedure may incorporate multiple parts of the body. For Darby, that included the transfer of a chewing nerve from the normal side of her face to the left side of her face. In the other part of step one, the doctor also surgically transplanted a leg nerve onto the unaffected right side of her face in 2018. Barrett said a year later, he surgically plugged that same leg nerve into the facial nerves on the left side. 

“With everyday life, you just learn to go with it. I’m so blessed that my glass is half-full. To me, it is not even half-full anymore. It is completely full with my family and my friends. My husband tells me every single day that I’m beautiful,” she said.

Over 30 years of working as a pharmacist makes her appreciate what medicine can do.

“I just enjoy the customers and having the community that I grew up in, having a lot of those as my customers,” Darby said.

The kind-hearted soul loves being able to help these familiar faces by telling her own story to the ones who experience symptoms like hers.

“It makes you realize how empathetic you need to be and how sincere you need to be because you know what they are going through,” Darby said.

To Darby, the world is one big neighborhood, and she treats everyone like a friend.

“With any community, it takes a village. Whether it’s a doctor, a surgeon, a nurse, a caregiver or even a pharmacist. We all have to come together to help the people that we love and to help the people that are in our communities,” Darby said.

Darby feels like her quality of life is strong thanks to the surgery. She said most of the cost of the operation was covered by her insurance.