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http://www.sundaytimes.news.com.au/c...%5E950,00.html
SHE is house-hunting, planning a new career and her once-broken heart is filled with hope.
Isabelle Dinoire knows that rebuilding her life will be a slow process.
But, even though her scars are still livid, she can now look at the world with optimism.
Barely two months ago, the 38-year-old French divorcee received the world's first face transplant and this exclusive photograph reveals the full extent of her remarkable transformation.
Last May, she had a wide, tilted nose, a prominent chin and thin lips. Today, the donated face of suicide Maryline Saint-Aubert has given her a straight and narrow nose, a neater chin and a fuller mouth.
Despite the prominent surgical scars, Miss Dinoire and her doctors say they are delighted by the results.
The operation has left her new mouth looking somewhat loose, but surgeons are confident she will regain control over her partially paralysed face.
Her recovery, they point out, is still in its early stages. Only last month, she appeared to be rejecting the precious new tissue, but a course of steroids has put her recuperation on track.
The transplant was performed by a team of 50 surgeons in Lyon, led by Jean-Michel Dubernard.
Five months earlier, Miss Dinoire's features were destroyed when her labrador savaged her while she was unconscious after a drug overdose. Her face was left a patchwork of torn flesh and exposed bone – so shocking that one of her two teenage daughters refused to look at her.
Miss Dinoire could not venture out of her home on the outskirts of Valenciennes, northern France, without wearing a dental mask. And the stares of strangers and their insensitive comments left her depressed.
But things are improving. She admits that the weeks spent in hospital in Amiens, hundreds of kilometres from her family, have been gruelling.
She said: "I spent Christmas in hospital, which was pretty awful really. The doctors cannot yet give me a date to go home.
"Lots has been said about how happy I am, but this has not always been the case. I spend almost all my time in my hospital room.
"Here, I have radio and television and there is also an exercise bike in the corner. I haven't started using it yet, but that may change."
This week, she left hospital to go home for the first time – a huge psychological step towards normality – to see her daughters Lucie, 17, and Laure, 15.
Miss Dinoire remains reluctant to visit shopping centres and other busy places. But under the close supervision of a team of psychiatrists, she is gaining the confidence to return to society.
In preparation for that important moment, she met housing officials in Valenciennes on Thursday.
It is thought she is considering moving to a neighbouring town with her daughters.
She says she is in a positive mood – though she is chain-smoking again – and is making plans to study computers and accounting at college, with a view to opening a baby-clothes shop.
She now has some feeling in her new face, a huge improvement from the early days after the operation when she felt nothing as she splashed water on her face or pressed her skin.
Her voice then was muffled by the paralysis and she found it hard to chew. Now, she can eat and is relishing food and drink. They are small pleasures, but to her they are miracles.
"I am eating as much as I can," she said in an interview with People magazine. "I love fresh strawberries, but have also eaten omelets, chocolate cake and all kinds of other food, including the odd glass of red wine."
Her new diet is helping her regain some of the weight she lost after the attack. But she still looks gaunt, with her fashionable jeans hanging off her slight frame.
Another of her surgeons, Bernard Devauchelle, said: "Her facial expressiveness is slowly returning and she is talking quite clearly, but has some problems with the letters P and B, which require the lips.
"She certainly does not look like the living dead. She's eating and drinking without dribbling.
"Psychologically, she has totally accepted her new face. Her return to smoking is not the best thing. But that's what she wants to do – we can't stop her."
Dr Devauchelle and his colleagues faced ethical questions about the transplant. The fact that Miss Dinoire had attempted to commit suicide led critics to ask if she was psychologically robust enough to adapt to life with someone else's face.
As a single parent, she had struggled to cope with her daughters and, according to friends, spent most of her time chain-smoking in front of a TV.
Then it emerged that the 46-year-old donor had committed suicide.
There is still a risk that Miss Dinoire's body will reject the new face and for the rest of her life she will have to take preventative drugs, which cause an increased risk of cancer and kidney disease.
But she is not letting anything spoil her hopes.
“"A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer."”
Bruce Lee
creepy
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From what I understand, the doctors are worried that it isn't going to take, due to the fact that the patient won't quit smoking.
Originally Posted by downhill
That would certainly be enough incentive for me! Sad. I wish her the very best.
Mystical Folding Minx
i wonder when they will be able to do brain transplants...just think if they do that...do they get a new personality?
Umm...no....Personalities won't change.
It's that you get a new body.
no i am saying if you get a new brain..LOL
say you got a brain tumor or something id ont know...and only way to be healed is to get a brain from someone who donates it whose body was sick..but brain was healthy at death
so now you get that new brain...who are you?
Purely sciencfiction at this point... But If the brain were "fresh" then they would actually be getting your body... You would be the donor...
She sounds somewhat wacked. A labrodor that attacked her whileshe was passed out? That dog must not have been treated right
Good Question Aug/GH,... I've read lots of 1st hand accounts of people who receive organ transplants, suddenly craving different foods, etc. One guy who received a transplant, suddenly developed a fond liking for Arizona State football, although he lived in the midwest, and never noticed the team. The donor wasn't secret, it was a young girl, early 20's. He later found out she was a member of the Arizona State Band.
“"A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer."”
Bruce Lee
Wasn't a Face Transplant*, purely science fiction-- just a movie?
“"A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer."”
Bruce Lee
Reminds me of that movie "Face Off" with Nickolas Cage and John Travolta.
.
She looks like a surprised Mick Hucknall Corleone.
The "Face Transplant" has a rather ghoulish sound for what is actually a complex skin/fascia graft.
How many livers did Mickey Mantle drink through?
Show me someone with a second chance and I'll will show you someone with any chance. Everyday, opportunities arise that people do not take for whatever proclivities they may have.
Wherever you go, there you are.
peace and blessings
Hell_Yes
Luck is where preparation meets opportunity - Seneca
"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'" - Isaac Asimov
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book. - Friedrich Nietzsche
Wise you are Hell_Yes... you forced me to look up the meaning of "proclivities", I had no idea what it meant...
“"A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer."”
Bruce Lee
updated pic of the face transplant woman. She looks much better. I wonder what she originally looked like?
SG Pimp Name : *Treacherous P. Shizzle*
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The fight for our way of life needs to be fought on our own soil, for our own people and because of our own interests.
*
Hey, If Me & My Buddies Were Making Billions of Dollars I'd Tell Ya What Ya Wanted To Hear Too!
"labrador savaged her while she was unconscious after a drug overdose"
This is bull, you can't get a lab to bite anyone especially it's owner.
So I guess the article is lying, right - because we all know they need a reason to lie about something like that. No, seriously.
What if the owner abused them. Look at the facts, she is a druggie, maybe she beat the dog in fits of rage when "jonesing".
“"A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer."”
Bruce Lee
Well said!!
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