What comes with a new face? For roughly 30 patients across the globe who have received face transplants, the answer is both very simple and complex: A new face brings a measure of normalcy after years of living with the unrelenting social cataclysm of disfigurement. For patients like Patrick Hardison, whose precedent-setting transplant was unveiled in New York this week, normalcy meant shopping at Macy’s without enduring the hushed remarks and quickly-averted stares of strangers. It meant touching his new chin and feeling sprouts of stubble for the first time in 14 years. It meant looking his teenage daughter in the eye, offering a familiar nod of reassurance, and wiping tears...
↧