Face transplant patient regains confidence

The first woman to ever receive a transplant of almost her entire face,and she has regained a lot of her self confidence. She was unable to smell, breath through her nose, and eat eat sold food, but now she can do all of that. This procedure took 22 hours to go through. This is amazing to me, that doctors can go straight through this surgery. They used pieces of the face from a donor. This gave the woman a new nose, right eye and upper jaw. This woman didn't even want to go out in public before now because she was constantly made fun of, but now she can finally feel free to go out whenever she wants and not feel bad about herself. I think this is an incredible thing, we have come so far in the science field. Years ago this would be something that you would have to deal with the rest of your life, but now it can change as soon as you find a donor. Donors still come few and far between, but when they do it is a very good thing. Restoring the function of her new parts was more important than making her look better, but it helped her a lot to feel good about herself after so long of being down. If more and more new inventions come out in the science field, then we can expect major changes to happen. A disease or things that happen to you during a car accident will no longer seem like something that you will be stuck with for the rest of your life. Now with a few procedures you will be good as new. This is an incredible thing, and I can't wait to see what scientists think of next!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/16/face.transplant.patient/index.html

What a good story. How awesome it would be to be able to face the world after being so deformed. I spent many years in five different hospitals with my daughter. I remember one baby in particular, down at Detroit Children’s Hospital. The baby had severe head and facial deformities. The mother spent days crying over this baby. This gives people like that some hope that they or their children will not have to go through life with all of the ridicule that goes along with a facial deformity. This also gives me hope for my daughter. She doesn’t have a large intestine. It’s a little different than facial deformity, but she still gets teased, because of having to wear a bag. She also is on a pump at night for hydration. I recently asked the doctors if there was a new procedure for kids like her yet. They said not so far. But I am hopeful!

That is really quite an amazing story that a procedure that intense and drastic actually worked and now a person can live a normal healthy life. The human race has sure come a long way and now with this procedure the idea of an "elephant man" could some day become impossible. Everyone should have the option of a normal functioning body, and so those who are less fortunate and are born with deformities or suffer from accidents can have options other than living life in fear of others thoughts about their differences. It is a great thing, but I hope it doesn't become some sort of plastic surgery or cosmetic surgery to get a brand new face.