I have to admire this womans courage and tenacity.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6230164.eceFrom Times OnlineMay 6, 2009
America's first face transplant patient shows off the results
Foreign Staff
Five years ago, a shotgun blast left a ghastly hole where the middle of her face had been. Five months ago, she received a new face from a dead woman. Yesterday, Connie Culp stepped forward to show off the results of America’s first face transplant.
Her face is bloated and squarish, and her skin droops in big folds that doctors plan to pare away as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating her new muscles.
Ms Culp’s husband, Thomas, shot her in 2004, then turned the gun on himself. He went to prison for seven years. His wife was left clinging to life. The blast shattered her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye. Hundreds of fragments of shotgun pellet and bone splinters were embedded in her face. She needed a tube into her windpipe to breathe. Only her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin were left.
She endured 30 operations to try to fix her face. Doctors took parts of her ribs to make cheekbones and fashioned an upper jaw from one of her leg bones. She had countless skin grafts from her thighs. Still, she was left unable to eat solid food, breathe on her own, or smell.
The clinic expects to absorb the cost of the transplant of $250,000 to $300,000 because it was experimental, doctors said.
