http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/06/i...artner=homepage

quote:

AMIENS, France, Feb. 6 — Isabelle Dinoire, the French woman who received the world's first partial face transplant, appeared before a roomful of reporters here today, speaking in a slurred voice about her ordeal and thanking the doctors and the donor who have given her a new nose, mouth and chin."Since the day of the operation, I have a face like everybody else," said Ms. Dinoire, 38, seated on a dais with her doctors in an amphitheater of the hospital where the transplant was performed in November. Though her lower lip hangs pendulously, exposing her lower teeth, and her perpetually open mouth barely moves as she speaks, Ms. Dinoire said she had begun to feel her transplanted skin. Ms. Dinoire's press conference was meant to ease public curiosity about the transplant and to show the world that the innovative post-transplant treatment was working. Though Ms. Dinoire's lower face barely moves and she speaks with difficulty — her "'s" sounds coming out like "sh" — the thin scar surrounding the transplant was barely visible at a distance. At one point during the press conference, she drank water from a plastic cup. Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard, who is in charge of her immunosuppressive treatment, said there is still a danger that Ms. Dinoire's body will reject the transplant and that her medication had already been adjusted to suppress signs of rejection that appeared 18 days after the operation. But he said that he has asked the French health authorities for permission to carry out five similar operations in the future. "We want to launch these new techniques to give hope to other people all over the world," Dr. Dubernard said. Ms. Dinoire described how she awoke to discover her horrible disfigurement after her black Labrador chewed off the lower part of her face while she was unconscious from taking sleeping pills in May last year in what many people contend was a suicide attempt. "On May 27, after a very disturbing week and with lots of personal worries, I took drugs to forget," Ms. Dinoire said, adding that she passed out and fell against a piece of furniture. "When I woke up, I tried to light a cigarette and didn't understand why it wouldn't stay between my lips," she said, her face slack and emotionless. "That's when I saw the pool of blood and the dog." Ms. Dinoire said she went to look at herself in a mirror and "couldn't believe what I was seeing, it was too horrible." Her lips were gone, along with her chin and much of her nose, leaving her teeth and part of her lower jawbone exposed. After calling her mother, who lived nearby, an ambulance rushed her to the local hospital. The doctors there transferred her to the care of Dr. Bernard Devauchelle, a renowned maxio-facial surgeon at the university hospital in Amiens. Ms. Dinoire's torn facial muscles contracted, leaving her unable to open her mouth more than a few millimeters and forcing her to eat all of her food pureed. Even after rigorous physical therapy, she could only open her mouth about three-quarters of an inch by the time the transplant was performed. "Now, I just open my mouth and eat," she told the reporters at the press conference, during which she occasionally smiled with her eyes, her peripheral facial muscles tugging her mouth into the hint of a smile. Ms. Dinoire's doctors said it would be months before they would know how much motor control she would develop in the transplanted part of her face. Ms. Dinoire said that "being able to show emotions through my face" was the best thing about her transplant and said she hopes to eventually be able to smile and grimace. She said the stares she received, even when wearing a surgical mask, were the worst thing about her disfigurement and that she didn't leave her room in the hospital for a month and a half after her disfigurement. "Little by little, the nurses and doctors explained to me their transplant project and restored my confidence," she said, adding that the hardest part was waiting for a donor, not knowing when one would appear. Now she said she is able to go into public without drawing much attention, though she said she continued to live in the hospital because of the harassment she has received from the news media. She said she had not spent very much time with her two daughters, aged 13 and 17, but that she was satisfied with their reaction to the transplant. She said she hopes to return to live with her daughters and eventually begin working again. She defended her decision to resume smoking within weeks of the transplant, which drew sharp criticism from the media. "Anyway, I never stopped smoking," she said, adding that, "If I could have avoided it, it would have been better," because of the harassment it has caused her and her family. She said it has been a long ordeal, but that "in the end, I never really suffered." She thanked the family of the donor and apologized for the media scrutiny that they have endured as a result of the transplant. The 46-year-old woman whose face Ms. Dinoire received reportedly committed suicide in Lille, not far from Amiens. "Despite their mourning, they agreed to give me a second life," she said. "Thanks to them, a door to the future is open to me and to others."

Quite impressive stuff, I must say. Although I find it absolutely hilarious that her excuse for getting a new face was because the dog ate her old one. Lamest excuse in the book.