Chimp Attack Victim Has A New Face But No Hands
June 10, 2011, 5:11 p.m.
The Connecticut woman whose face was devoured by an angry chimp two years ago successfully underwent the third face transplant in U.S. history last month, her doctors say.
Travis the chimp in 2003. In 2009 he was shot by the police after he viciously ate off the face of his owner's friend Charla Nash.
After more than 20 hours of surgery Charla Nash, the Connecticut woman whose face was eaten in a bizzarre chimp attack two years ago, has a new face, doctors say (warning, the Reuters article has a graphic photograph of Nash). A team of more than 30 surgeons in Boston last week not only replaced Nash's nose, lips, facial skin, teeth, face muscles and nerves, they also performed a double hand transplant. However the hands did not "thrive" after Nash suffered complications from pneumonia and had to be removed.
Doctors expect another hand transplant to be successful, however, and in the meantime Nash should now start to regain her sense of smell and sensation in her face. Eventually, she will "be able to smile, express emotions and eat normally." But not yet. For now Nash is still recovering from the pneumonia she caught after the surgery and is "just starting to wake up," according to a family spokeman.
"She's not aware of the hands, that she lost them," he said. "She's still groggy. She's acknowledging with a nod that someone is there, but she still has pneumonia issues. The kidneys are back working, but she isn't aware of too much yet."
The surgery was the third of its kind in U.S. history and, like the others, was performed at Brigham and Women's in Boston.
Nash lost her face in 2009 while helping her friend Sandra Herold catch her pet chimp Travis. Something set the chimp off and he proceeded to viciously eat her alive, only stopping when police shot him dead. Her family is seeking $50 million from the estate of Herold (who died last year) and another $150 million from the state of Connecticut.
