She is still unable to move her lips fully and her speech remains slurred. But the world's first face transplant patient said on Monday that the controversial operation had given her back "a normal life".
Speaking publicly for the first time since undergoing surgery, Isabelle Dinoire thanked her doctors and told a packed press conference: "Now I have a face like everyone else."
Even under harsh lights, the triangular scar marking the edge of the transplanted skin was barely visible. Although she seemed unable to close her mouth, at one point she took a drink of water from a plastic cup.
PHOTO: EPA
Dinoire lost her nose, lips and chin when her pet dog mauled her face as she slept in May last year. She made medical history when she was given a partial face transplant using tissue from a brain-dead woman in a 15-hour operation at Amiens hospital in November.
She thanked her medical team and the family of the donor. She explained how her face was terribly disfigured in what she described as "an accident."
"On May 27 after a very disturbing week and lots of personal worries, I took some tablets to forget," Dinoire said.
"Then I felt faint and I passed out. When I woke up I tried to light a cigarette and I couldn't understand why I couldn't hold it between my lips. It was then I saw a pool of blood and the dog next to me," she said.
"I went to look in the mirror and I was horrified. I couldn't believe what I saw, especially as I didn't feel any pain. Since that day my life has changed," Dinoire said.
She said she did not leave her room in hospital for six weeks because "I was afraid of other people's looks".
She could not eat normally because she was unable to open her mouth more than 3mm.
"Now I can open my mouth and eat. Since recently I can feel my lips, my nose and my mouth," she said.
She hoped to pick up her family life with her two daughters and to work again, adding: "I also hope my operation will help other people injured like me to live again."
As Professor Bernard Devauchelle, one of the surgeons involved in the transplant, described the operation, photographs of Dinoire's disfigured face before surgery were shown on a screen behind the stage. Dinoire stared firmly ahead.
He said Dinoire had eaten food by mouth just seven days after the transplant. Explaining why she was unable to move her lower lip, he said muscular movement was the most difficult to restore but was happening slowly.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS