Groundbreaking face transplant: firefighter injured on duty receives face of deceased cyclist
This has been in the news for the last two days. The operation took place three months ago.
Groundbreaking face transplant: After a firefighter was injured on duty, a deceased 26-year-old cyclist gave him his life back
By Ariana Eunjung Cha November 17 at 8:50 AM
Patrick Hardison was working as a volunteer firefighter in his hometown of Senatobia, 40 miles south of Memphis, when he got a desperate call. A house was in flames, with a woman trapped inside. Hardison arrived on the scene and raced inside, moments before the roof suddenly collapsed. His helmet was knocked off, and he felt his mask melting. He closed his eyes and jumped out the window.
Hardison lost his eyelids, ears, lips and most of his nose, as well as his hair, because of that fire. He also had disfiguring third-degree burns across his entire face, head, neck and upper torso. His skin was so badly damaged that he was not even able to close his eyes completely.
"From that day on, Sept. 5, 2001, there was no normal tissue left throughout his face," Eduardo D. Rodriguez, chair of plastic surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center, said in recounting the first responder's story.
In a press conference on Monday, the medical center announced that Hardison, now 41 and a father of five, had undergone the world's most extensive face transplant to date. The donor was a young BMX cyclist from Ohio named David Rodebaugh, whose family donated his liver, kidneys, and both eyes to help other patients. A representative from LiveOnNY, which works to match donors with recipients in the New York metropolitan area, said his mother didn't hesitate when asked about the face transplant and called her son "a free spirit who loved life." ... The transplant operation, which took place Aug. 14, was funded by a grant from NYU Langone. The hospital estimates it cost between $850,000 and $1 million.
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It is socially isolating like nothing else I can imagine.
As for organ donation, I've been on the list since the early 1970s. Plan A is for me to use everything up and die at a ripe old age. Plan B is for my untimely demise to benefit as many other people as medically possible, because I sure won't need my bits and pieces any more.
When I met my husband, he was against willing his body parts for donation. It was familial, cultural, religious. I never argued, just explained my philosophy, repeating it over the years if the topic came up. And I promised I would never go against his wishes, only asking that he would fulfill mine in turn.
And guess what -- he long ago came around to my point of view. 
