Face Transplant Unveiled After Shotgun Blast
An American woman who was given a near-total face transplant after a shotgun attack by her husband has unveiled the results of her surgery.
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Connie Culp, 46, was left without a nose, a palate or lower eyelids when she was blasted in 2004.
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.
Last December she underwent a 22-hour procedure at the Cleveland Clinic in the state of Ohio, where a team of 11 surgeons restored about 80% of Ms Culp's face using facial tissue from a dead woman.
The doctors said Ms Culp, who was missing bone support and had been unable to eat or breathe without a tube in her windpipe, could now perform those functions normally.
"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," she said.
https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif Graphic of the face transplant
Although the clinic had revealed the surgery in December, Ms Culp's identity and the incident that disfigured her were kept secret.
She said when plastic surgeon Risal Djohan first looked her injuries "he told me he didn't think, he wasn't sure, if he could fix me, but he'd try.
"But here I am, five years later. He did what he said - I got me my nose," she said with a laugh.
https://teakdoor.com/images/smilies1/You_Rock_Emoticon.gif The surgeons at work in Cleveland
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."
It's a role she has already practiced, said clinic psychiatrist Dr. Kathy Coffman.
Once while shopping, "she heard a little kid say, `You said there were no real monsters mommy, and there's one right there,'" Coffman said.
Culp stopped and said, "I'm not a monster. I'm a person who was shot," and pulled out her driver's license to show the child what she used to look like, the psychiatrist said.
