March 31, 2022

"His decision to get the [face] transplant came about because he didn’t want his children to be bullied and be labeled as 'outcasts' due to his disfigurement."

"Having people scream at the sight of you is upsetting, and I couldn’t imagine that happening in the company of my own children,' he said. He recalled the aftermath of his accident... no one would show me a mirror until my ex-girlfriend at the time came to visit and brought one with her.... I can’t describe the feeling I had when seeing myself like that, it didn’t feel real. I was unrecognizable....'"

Leave it to ex-girlfriends to confront you with the awful truth.

Here's the article, at the NY Post, "I had a full-face transplant and it was the best decision I ever made."

I'm not going to confront you with the visual truth right here. You can click on the link. You will see a terrible disfigurement and a really nicely accomplished face transplant. I have followed face transplants here on the blog since the first one — Isabelle Dinoir — whose nose, mouth, and chin were bitten off by her Labrador retriever. (She was unconscious. Don't judge the dog. But spare me the theory that the dog was just doing his faithful best to wake her up.)

Here are the before and after photos of Dinoir. It's impressive how well it was done the first time:

"I couldn't even begin to imagine it was my face or my blood - or that the dog had chewed my face," she says. The injuries to her mouth, nose and chin were so extreme that doctors immediately ruled out a routine face reconstruction. Instead they proposed a ground-breaking face transplant. 
"From the first time I saw myself in the mirror after the operation I knew it was a victory. It didn't look that good because of all the bandages, but I had a nose, I had a mouth - it was fantastic," she says. "I could see in the eyes of the nurses that it was a success."

14 comments:

RideSpaceMountain said...

"Leave it to ex-girlfriends to confront you with the awful truth."

Nah. Sometimes it's your wife, and she does it on television in front of a live studio audience.

Breezy said...

There, but for the grace of God, go I. These stories help me put perspective on my own problems.

Jamie said...

We live in an age of miracles.

Mazo Jeff said...

Reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode. The women was disfigured and wrapped in bandages after face reconstruction. As the bandages are removed, the surrounding doctors and nurses ( whose faces are never visible) gasp in horror. "It's a failure, surgery did not help)! Camera shows this beautiful woman! And all the medical personnel are disfigured!

Tom T. said...

The dog was thinking, "Dinoire is served!" My guess would be that she'd neglected to feed him during the depths of her depression.

I guess since there's no hurry, they can wait for a donor with a matching skin tone. If this capability had been around back in the 1970s, somebody would have made a comedy movie about a nebbish White guy waking up with a Black guy's face. These days I suppose you could do the reverse, but as a horror movie: Black man gets a White face transplant, and then the rest of him starts turning White.

Ann Althouse said...

"World's First Face Transplant in a Black Patient Brought Special Challenges":

"It took four times as long to find Chelsea a suitable donor than it typically does for white patients, doctors said, due to a lack of donors and the wider variability in skin tone among Black Americans. "It's so rare to find a Black face [for transplant]," Chelsea said in an interview with the BBC. "We didn't know how rare it was." In addition, tracking Chelsea's post-surgery progress proved more complex due to his darker skin tone, with doctors less able to see the redness that serves as an early warning sign for rejection, said lead surgeon Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, director of plastic surgery transplantation at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.... In August 2013, Chelsea's disabled car was struck by a drunk driver on an L.A. freeway with such force that the vehicle exploded on impact. Chelsea suffered burns over 60% of his body and face. He lost his lips, part of his nose and part of an ear, and required upwards of 40 surgeries to regain his health. Doctors recommended a face transplant for Chelsea, and put him on the transplant list. "To be able to address a person without intimidating them would be a major relief," Chelsea told the BBC prior to his surgery."

Did he really need to wait for a black face?

" "There is a really remarkably low number of African-American donors," Pomahac said.... Another problem involved finding a good match for skin tone, which in a Black patient can range from almost dark black-blue to light cappuccino, Pomahac said. "There are so many ranges of different colors that it would look extremely disturbing" were a transplant to be performed with a mismatched tone, Pomahac said. Chelsea declined two donors before finding one he considered compatible. Pomahac said there also were other donors that weren't even presented to Chelsea as an option, because they were so mismatched from the start. Skin tone also shaped the final extent of the surgery. Chelsea really only needed a partial face transplant, but "we ultimately decided to do full-face because I was worried the face would look abnormal" with two different skin tones," Pomahac said."

Joe Smith said...

I don't even want to see the photos.

But it is odd that she was attacked by a Labrador...they are usually super friendly and mellow...

'Did he really need to wait for a black face?'

Wearing black face is always wrong.

Iman said...

Nothing short of amazing.

Howard said...

Once again, elite highly educated libtards save the day.

n.n said...

Do what you can, when you can, if you can, within reason.

MadisonMan said...

But was the ex-girlfriend an ex-girlfriend when she showed him his face?

Ann Althouse said...

“ Camera shows this beautiful woman! ”

Yes, it was Ellie Mae Clampett.

Joe Bar said...

That's incredible.

Lurker21 said...

Just for the record, which pets won't eat you when you are unconscious?

Inquiring minds want to know.