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جوري
05-09-2009, 10:46 PM
Face Transplant Patient Comes Forward

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
, AP
posted: 3 DAYS 6 HOURS AGO
comments: 576
filed under: Health News, National News

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CLEVELAND (May 6) -- When Connie Culp heard a little kid call her a monster because of the shotgun blast that left her face horribly disfigured, she pulled out her driver's license to show the child what she used to look like. Years later, as the nation's first face transplant recipient, she's stepped forward to show the rest of the world what she looks like now.
Her 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. Her skin droops in big folds that doctors plan to pare away as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating her new muscles.
Skip over this content 'The One You Came to See'



Amy Sancetta, AP
8 photos





Connie Culp said Friday she forgives her husband for shooting in the face, causing the devastating injuries that led her to undergo the first face transplant in the U.S. Culp told ABC's 'Good Morning America' that she realized the procedure had worked when she first smelled soap. Warning: Some of the following images are graphic.

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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."



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.
Skip over this content Face Transplants



Brigham and Women's Hospital / AP
13 photos





Doctors at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston performed the world's seventh face transplant surgery April 9. Doctors said there are plans for more face transplants, but that it's likely to remain an uncommon surgery. Warning: Some images in the gallery may be disturbing.

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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.
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.
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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.
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."
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.
Culp, who is from the small town of Unionport, near the Pennsylvania line, told her doctors she just wants to blend back into society. She has a son and a daughter who live near her, and two preschooler grandsons. Before she was shot, she and her husband ran a painting and contracting business, and she did everything from hanging drywall to a little plumbing, Coffman said.
Skip over this content Amazing Transplants



Rob Carr, AP
10 photos





Doctors removed one of Kim Johnson's kidneys through her vagina in January. Here, Johnson, who gave her niece the kidney, sits in a relative's Baltimore home four days after the procedure.

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Culp left the hospital Feb. 5 and has returned for periodic follow-up care. She has suffered only one mild rejection episode that was controlled with a single dose of steroid medicines, her doctors said. She must take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of her life, but her dosage has been greatly reduced and she needs only a few pills a day.
The clinic expects to absorb the cost of the transplant because it was experimental, doctors said. Siemionow estimated it at $250,000 to $300,000. That is less than the $1 million that other surgeons estimate it costs them to treat other severely disfigured people through dozens of separate operations, she said.
Also at the Cleveland Clinic is Charla Nash of Stamford, Conn., who was attacked by a friend's chimpanzee in February. She lost her hands, nose, lips and eyelids, and will be blind, doctors said. Clinic officials said it is premature to discuss the possibility of a face transplant for her.
In April, doctors at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston performed the nation's second face transplant, on a man disfigured in a freak accident. It was the world's seventh such operation. The first, in 2005, was performed in France on Isabelle Dinoire, a woman who had been mauled by her dog.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. Active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

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Yanal
05-09-2009, 11:10 PM
:sl:
SubhanAllah.
Reply

FatimaAsSideqah
05-09-2009, 11:13 PM
:sl:

Subhan'Allah, shes forgives her husband.
Reply

جوري
05-09-2009, 11:14 PM
indeed...
western women aren't battered, only the Muslim ones are of course by religious edict!

:w:
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Sahabiyaat
05-09-2009, 11:21 PM
indeed ^ had this been a muslim woman, im sure Islam would have been the first to be insulted, rather than the husband.
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Güven
05-09-2009, 11:22 PM
subhanAllah , what kind of husband shoots a shotgun on his wife's face anyway.

that's just crazy.
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جوري
05-09-2009, 11:23 PM
Did you see this poor woman's face?..
what kind of quality of life will she have? it is really very sad!

Al7mdlilah Alzhi 3afana mima ibtala beh ghyrona, wa'fadhalana 3la katherrin mima khalaqa tafdeela...
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جوري
05-09-2009, 11:27 PM
that is absolutely true.. everything seeks permission from God, all the cells in the body that work on their volition to maintain us around the clock.. if people would merely reflect...

How much would she pay to have the face that Allah swt bestowed upon her, and look at the face that all of modern science and its advances has given her...

I feel truly sorry for this woman...

May Allah swt save us from the devils of this world especially the human variety!
Reply

FatimaAsSideqah
05-09-2009, 11:27 PM
Thumma Ameen on your duas.

What's the reason is that her ex husband shot her like that? Thats just crazy! Kids were terrified to look her in horror and ran away!
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جوري
05-09-2009, 11:29 PM
I have no idea why he shot her, and I can't think of a single reason in the world that would make him do so, even if she committed the most heinous of sins..
Reply

Güven
05-09-2009, 11:30 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Gossamer skye
Did you see this poor woman's face?..
what kind of quality of life will she have? it is really very sad!

Al7mdlilah Alzhi 3afana mima ibtala beh ghyrona, wa'fadhalana 3la katherrin mima khalaqa tafdeela...
the transplant seems to have succeed though, the face looks a bit normal now. (if im not mistaken)


Indeed,Alhamdullilah for all we have been blessed with.
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FatimaAsSideqah
05-09-2009, 11:32 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Güven
the transplant seems to have succeed though, the face looks a bit normal now. (if im not mistaken)


Indeed,Alhamdullilah for all we have been blessed with.
I have heard that she might going to have another operation for more improved with her new face later on this year. I am not sure?
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جوري
05-10-2009, 12:07 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by Güven
the transplant seems to have succeed though, the face looks a bit normal now. (if im not mistaken)


Indeed,Alhamdullilah for all we have been blessed with.

format_quote Originally Posted by FatimaAsSideqah
I have heard that she might going to have another operation for more improved with her new face later on this year. I am not sure?
I don't think any operation will make her what she was... they are strictly for quality of life and like with any transplant, she will have to take immuno-suppressive agents which will make her susceptible to a host of opportunistic infections!

May Allah swt have mercy on us

:w:
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Whatsthepoint
05-10-2009, 11:55 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp26HIdPyYY
She seems a very positive person-
Will they be able to remove the extra skin in the lower parts of her face?
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aamirsaab
05-10-2009, 01:06 PM
:sl:

I wonder how many more events like these are needed for guns to become outlawed completely in the US.
Reply

Whatsthepoint
05-10-2009, 01:08 PM
If gun posession was mandatory at all times she could have shot the *******.
Reply

جوري
05-10-2009, 04:11 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by Whatsthepoint
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp26HIdPyYY
She seems a very positive person-
Will they be able to remove the extra skin in the lower parts of her face?
it depends on whether or not she gains some muscle function.. Nerves don't usually tend to generate except in very small measures.. they wouldn't want to cut too much sin whereby she ends up with necrotic areas because of lack of blood supply and then the entire transplant will have gone to waste...

I really hope things work our for this lady.. and someone needs to shoot that SOB in the face and fix him poorly so he'd live with what he has done having tasted the same!
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