![]() She is also subjected to MRIs and CT scans to determine how well her brain is sending signals to her new face. She was working as a dispatcher for a towing company at the time of the attack.Ībout every six weeks, Nash undergoes lab tests for the military at Brigham and Women's. Over the years, she also did some horse-jumping, worked on a farm and manned a computer help desk. Her life today is a stark contrast to her younger years, when she was a barrel racer on the rodeo circuit from the 1970s through the mid-1990s. A GoFundMe account is being set up to help raise money for prosthetic hands, which would not be covered by the Department of Defense. She also exercises a couple of days a week with a trainer at a gym to build her strength and stay healthy. ![]() Now blind, Nash spends most of her days listening to AM radio and books on tape - lately, "War and Peace" - in her modest, second-story apartment. She also underwent a double hand transplant, but it failed when her body rejected the tissue. She later received new facial features taken from a dead woman. Doctors also had to remove her eyes because of a disease transmitted by the chimp. Nash lost her nose, lips, eyelids and hands when she was mauled by her employer's 200-pound pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Connecticut. "They asked me, could they? I said, 'Yeah, I'd be thrilled to help out in any way I could,'" said Nash, a former Connecticut resident who now lives on her own in Boston with the help of part-time aides. But the 61-year-old daughter of an Air Force veteran said she gets real satisfaction out of letting the doctors use her for research, and she sees it as an opportunity to help wounded soldiers and "do something good out of all of this bad." Nash jokes about sometimes feeling like a science project. In the coming weeks, for example, Nash will take part in a military-funded experiment in which doctors at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital will try to wean her off the anti-rejection drugs she has been taking since the transplant. The agency is also underwriting Nash's follow-up treatment at a combined cost estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hope that some of the things it learns can help young, seriously disfigured soldiers returning from war. military paid for Nash's full face transplant in 2011, as well as face transplants for a small group of other civilians. The Pentagon, though, is watching her recovery closely. She was horribly disfigured, not in combat, but in a 2009 attack by a rampaging chimpanzee. Her eyes had to be removed after the attack.BOSTON - Charla Nash never served in the military. She could eat, smell, express her emotion and feel the face." When the transplanted tissue heals and nerves regrow – a process that will take at least nine months and possibly longer – Pomahac says Nash "should control the face well. "We're optimistic that should Charla choose in the future, we could transplant the hands again, should a suitable donor be identified."ĭespite the loss of the hands, Pomahac says, "I consider it still a success" because Nash has a very good chance of regaining "a very functional face." "After several days of doing everything possible to retain the hands, it was clear that they were not thriving," Pomahac said at a press conference. That compromised blood flow to the transplanted hands, so surgeons had to remove them. But after the operation Nash suffered a blood infection that caused her blood pressure to crash. In a 20-hour operation, surgeon Bohdan Pomahac says the team transplanted hands from the same donor. Charla Nash: Transplant animation from BWH Public Affairs on Vimeo.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |