Carmen Tarleton was living out her divorce several years ago, when her former husband chose to do the utmost crime: attack her face with a bottle of lye.
Her face, as a result, was completely destroyed, leaving only a handful of muscles and skull structure for the doctors to work on. In 2007, she became one of the very few people since the first transplant to receive a total face transplant. However, the initial transplant, in recent years has turned out to have its faults. The infections and the immune-related syndromes happened too much that it risked her future life.
So come brave Carmen, 52 years old, already through with a surgery that is one of the most dangerous and sophisticated.
What she dared to do in the previous month in July is not only a result of medical advancement, but something so rare that it’s the first of its kind in the US, and second in the world. She has gone on to carry out with a second face transplant.
The surgery took place in Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital in July. The surgery took more than 45 doctors and a duration of 20 hours.
“That first face transplant served me very well,” Tarleton said after her surgery was over, “And when it started to fail I just knew from experience that a face transplant gives me the comfort and function I want and need on a daily level — that I’m going to live a better life with a face transplant.
” She had also said that “all the pain I had in my failing face is gone.” Her concerns, for now, is on “incisional and swelling” related pain.
Her doctors agreed that the recovery is going smoothly.
“Carmen is progressing and recovering very nicely with this second transplant — she is one of the most resilient patients that I have had the opportunity to care for,” Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, Brigham’s director of Plastic Surgery Transplantation, said in a press release.
“We call this procedure live-giving, and we are thrilled to offer her the opportunity to return to the type of life that she so richly deserves.”
Tarleton’s first face transplant had plagued her with scarring, tightness, swelling, and pain.
“Going into her second face transplant, Carmen was not highly sensitized, not at high risk of rejection, as she had lost nearly all of the HLA antibodies in her blood that had made her previously highly sensitized — likely due to the immunosuppression she had received during the first transplant,” Dr. Anil Chandraker, another main member said in a press release.
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Replaced!