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.
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