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Title: Nation’s first face transplant patient goes public
Source:
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URL Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30586321/
Published: May 5, 2009
Author: AP
Post Date: 2009-05-05 21:52:20 by christine
Keywords: None
Views: 103
Comments: 5
CLEVELAND - 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. Connie Culp stepped forward Tuesday to show off the results of the nation’s first face transplant, and her new look was a far cry from the puckered, noseless sight that made children run away in horror. Culp’s expressions are still a bit wooden, but she can talk, smile, smell and taste her food again. Her speech is at times a little tough to understand. 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. But Culp had nothing but praise for those who made her new face possible. “I guess I’m the one you came to see today,” the 46-year-old Ohio woman said at a news conference at the Cleveland Clinic, where the groundbreaking operation was performed. But “I think it’s more important that you focus on the donor family that made it so I could have this person’s face.” No longer secret Up until Tuesday, Culp’s identity and how she came to be disfigured were a secret. 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. A plastic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Risal Djohan, got a look at her injuries two months later. “He told me he didn’t think, he wasn’t sure, if he could fix me, but he’d try,” Culp recalled. 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. Video Face transplant patient speaks out May 5: Dr. Maria Siemionow from the Cleveland Clinic and face transplant patient Connie Culp discuss the complex process which involved replacing the entire nose, eyelids, palate and some bones. MSNBC Then, on Dec. 10, in a 22-hour operation, Dr. Maria Siemionow led a team of doctors who replaced 80 percent of Culp’s face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died. It was the fourth face transplant in the world, though the others were not as extensive. “Here I am, five years later. He did what he said — I got me my nose,” Culp said of Djohan, laughing. In January, she was able to eat pizza, chicken and hamburgers for the first time in years. She loves to have cookies with a cup of coffee, Siemionow said. ‘I’m not a monster’ No information has been released about the donor or how she died, but her family members were moved when they saw before-and-after pictures of Culp, Siemionow said. Culp said she wants to help foster acceptance of those who have suffered burns and other disfiguring injuries. “When somebody has a disfigurement and don’t look as pretty as you do, don’t judge them, because you never know what happened to them,” she said. “Don’t judge people who don’t look the same as you do. Because you never know. One day it might be all taken away.” Poster Comment: Video at url
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#1. To: christine (#0)
How much we have to be thankful for . . Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
She looks full of life. That's a hell of a woman.
Apparently her family at least partly abandoned her as she alluded to the staff at the hospital being her "real family." Think of the depression a human being would go through in such a horrific ordeal. Before her husband tried to murder her:
Quite a lady. Thanks for finding that.
It is acts like this that makes one aware that there truly is human compassion and there truly is a hell waiting those who cause such suffering.
#2. To: HAPPY2BME-4UM, christine (#1)
#3. To: Deasy (#2)
#4. To: HAPPY2BME-4UM (#3)
#5. To: Deasy (#4)
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