In 2022, Juanita Jimenez faced a life-altering tragedy. At just 22 years old and a senior at Lehman College, her world turned upside down when a woman hurled sulfuric acid at her during her commute to Brooklyn’s Kings County Hospital, where she worked as a primary care assistant.
The attack left Juanita with second- and third-degree burns that permanently altered her appearance. Looking in the mirror for the first time afterward, she recalls feeling “really distraught,” telling PEOPLE, “I don’t think that I ever fully adjusted to my facial scars.” She underwent debridements (medical procedures that remove dead skin from a wound to reduce infection risks and promote healing, per Healthline) at Jacobi Medical Center.
Things began to improve when Juanita reached out to Dr. Carl Truesdale, a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based plastic surgeon known for documenting his patients’ cosmetic journeys on social media. “He specializes in keloids [surgeries] and that’s specifically what I was struggling with,” she explains. Dr. Truesdale’s experience with Black patients also gave her reassurance. “Every other doctor and surgeon that I had a conversation with in New York kept saying that with Black skin, you got to be a lot more cautious. I already just wasn’t really confident with those doctors and [Dr. Truesdale] was the most promising doctor I had during that struggling time.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(499x0:501x2):format(webp)/Juanita-acid-burn-090825-01-c84cf53616b140398dea5bc90dbf5b89.jpg)
Juanita initially contacted Dr. Truesdale over TikTok for a second opinion. Her story resonated with him so deeply that he offered to perform her reconstructive surgeries—which could have cost $80,000—free of charge.
“I wanted to look like the old me,” says Juanita, who had modeled before the attack. “I never really considered any enhancements [before the acid attack]. I love my natural beauty, from my hair to my nose. My main thing was, ‘I could show you a before picture, please just get me exactly or close to how I looked before.’”
In January 2024, Juanita traveled to the West Coast for her surgeries, split into two procedures to reduce the risk of blood supply complications, according to Dr. Truesdale’s Beyond the Surface YouTube series.
The first surgery was a four-hour “reverse facelift,” medically called a deep-plane cervicofacial rotation-advancement flap, designed to rebuild her nose and lip area that had merged due to keloids using muscle and skin. “I wanted my lip to be lowered from the top. That was my main priority because I felt like that was the first thing you could see when you look at my face and see my scar,” Juanita explains.
Nine months later, she returned to California for a two-hour procedure to remove a keloid from under her chin.
For Juanita, the biggest reward was regaining her confidence. “I’m very happy at this stage of my life,” she says. Having graduated college, she is now focused on passing the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test). “That’s why I was so glad that I pushed forward. Even through all the surgeries, I still [finished] school. Now I could really put this whole thing behind me and be a doctor.”
