Photograph
James McGowan: Face

The one on my face, I can’t believe I forgot that one. It actually looked like I had a second mouth. It was a work injury: I was grinding a plate of steel: a quarter-inch, three by three plate. It sucked it in and shot it into my face. It was a workers comp case. It was negligence on behalf of my boss, because he’s the one who told me to use that machine. I went to University Hospital first and they are really full, so I got up and walked down to St. Josephs, which their ER was completely empty. So I had the whole plastic surgeon team to work on my face, and they got that scar down to almost nothing. Then I used this cream called Lancôme Neutrix. Really good for scars. It has a really high sun block 'cause the sun is really not good for a fresh wound. Once you’ve got a scab, you start putting that cream on. It helps, because even the most minimal amount of sunlight, just driving around, will be enough to cause severe damage to healing tissue.