Tuesday, December 06, 2005

A New Face?

News is filled with stories of the partial face transplant. A woman who was maulled by a dog, and the doctors hadn't managed to repair the damage. It was decided that she would be a suitable candidate for the the experiment.

A number of years ago I remember seeing a movie, based on a true story of a women severely injured in a car accident. Her face was destroyed and she needed massive, complicated surgery. She couldn't speak, and her head was totally bandaged. She had spunk.

Eventually her face was reconstructed, and she married her surgeon. The opening of the movie had her applying make-up and looking like a very classy woman. Then it was done in flashback.

There are some very serious dangers in the face transplant. I wonder if they are different from other transplants. It's the need to take tons of medications to suppress the immune system to keep it from rejecting the foreign skin. According to the article I linked, it's only the skin that is transplanted not the bones and features. So people should look similar to how they looked before.

In a few days a good friend and a tireless worker for Israel, Judith Yehudit bat Tzippora will get a donor kidney. Let's wish her a refuah shleimah.

2 comments:

Esther said...

She will be in my prayers for sure. Yeah, that facial surgery thing....oy. Now they're saying she was suicidal right after the disfiguring and might not have been mentally ready. I just hope this makes her happy.

Batya said...

The medication regime is tough, and usually they don't let anyone who isn't stable enough.