Posted on 11/10/2017 11:09:33 AM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
ROCHESTER, Minn. — Standing in a stately Mayo Clinic library, Lilly Ross reached out and touched the face of a stranger, prodding the rosy cheeks and eyeing the hairless gap in a chin she once had known so well.
"That's why he always grew it so long, so he could try to mesh it together on the chin," she told Andy Sandness, as he shut his eyes and braced for the tickle of her touch on new nerve endings in the face that had been her husband's.
Sixteen months after transplant surgery gave Sandness the face that had belonged to Calen "Rudy" Ross, he met the woman who had agreed to donate her high school sweetheart's visage to a man who lived nearly a decade without one.
The two came together last month in a meeting arranged by the Mayo Clinic, the same place where Sandness underwent a 56-hour surgery that was the clinic's first such transplant. With her toddler Leonard in tow, Ross strode toward Sandness, tears welling in her eyes as they tightly embraced.
Ross had fretted before the meeting, fearful of the certain reminders of her husband, who took his own life. But her stress quickly melted away — without Calen's eyes, forehead or strong cheeks, Sandness didn't look like him, she told herself.
Instead, she saw a man whose life had changed through her husband's gift, newly confident after 10 years of hiding from mirrors and staring eyes.
"It made me proud," Ross said of the 32-year-old Sandness. "The way Rudy saw himself ... he didn't see himself like that."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Damn, sorry but that is creepy as hell, even gave me chills. Imagine seeing the face of your spouse on someone else.
Gives the term “giving head” a whole new meaning.
AFAIK, the differences in the skull underneath mean that the skin off a person’s face doesn’t look the same after being transplanted on someone else.
Now that’s funny!!!!!!
“Imagine seeing the face of your spouse on someone else.”
Usually, that leads to a divorce.
We are at most a few decades from the ability to 3D print a new face using our own cultured tissue.
This tech will supplant many plastic surgery procedures.
My plastic surgeon (skin cancers,NOT nose job!) was part of the team that did the second face transplant performed in the United States.He’s told me stories about the relationship between the recipient and the widow of the donor.It sounds like a pretty cool relationship.
What you did there? I see it.
Rodney Dangerfield: My wife suggested I get a face lift. They found one just like it underneath!
LOL
I’m sure there’s going to be a very long line of guys trying to get my face when I’m gone....
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