Three years ago, the American Katie Stubbfield shot herself in the head with a gun.
Katie was a very attractive girl. She was in her senior year when a series of troubles began in her life. Surgeons performed an unsuccessful operation on her for appendicitis, which led to complications and the girl again had to go to the operating table, this time her gallbladder was removed. It seems to be nonsense. But after a couple of months, the headmaster fired Katie's mother - she taught at the same school where her daughter studied. And on March 25, 2017, Katie found another girl's love letter on her boyfriend's phone. The world, which, in Katie's opinion, had previously behaved rather hostile towards her, collapsed. She went in a state of shock to her older brother Robert. While he called his mother back to find out what happened, Katie took Robert's hunting rifle, went into the bathroom and shot herself in the head …
Doctors managed to save the girl's life, but her face was completely destroyed. The shot tore apart the central part of the face from the chin to the upper part of the forehead: the nose, mouth, upper and lower jaw were gone … Only the eyes remained from the face, but they were also badly damaged. Doctors covered the open wounds with skin patches from the girl's abdomen and thigh, but her face was disfigured. Overnight, she turned from a beauty into a monster. The family has spent an incredible amount of effort to restore Katie's desire to live. But the momentary weakness, when death seemed to her more attractive than life, cost the girl dearly. The point is not only in the lost appearance, she has lost the ability to fully breathe, speak, eat and even blink her eyes, which causes enormous inconvenience. For three years, the poor thing underwent two dozen different preparatory surgeries:doctors implanted a titanium lower jaw in her, used the Achilles tendon to reconstruct the chin and lower lip, recreated the nasal passage, closed the open part of the brain with a skull implant …
The surgeons of the Cleveland Clinic, one of the most advanced scientific medical centers in the United States, undertook to make the girl a new face. It was here that the first face transplant in American history was performed in 2008. However, operations of such a volume, when it was necessary to transplant 100 percent of facial tissues, have not been performed anywhere else. Katie was put on the waiting list in March 2016. A year later, a donor was found for her. It turned out to be a 31-year-old resident of Cleveland, Andrea Schneider, who died of a drug overdose.
Andrea Schneider, face donor, died of an overdose.
In May 2017, a team of 11 high-class surgeons performed a complex transplant in 31 hours, which included transplanting not only the entire skin of the face, nerves and muscles, but also the upper and lower jaws and teeth and part of the facial bones.
However, the doctors publicly reported about the unique operation only 15 months later, when it became obvious that everything went well and the new face took root. Katie not only finally got her good looks. She began to speak much better, got the opportunity to eat on her own and slowly learn to manage her new face.
“Katie’s face is already showing different emotions, for example, she begins to smile and we expect significant progress in this area,” says the attending physician Dr. Gastman. - It will not be a lifeless mask, but a full face. Even if not as beautiful as she had before.
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Doctors note that the psychological state of the patient, who was very worried about her appearance, has noticeably improved. They expect that over time, the girl will return to normal life and find her place in society.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV