Historic face transplant gives suicide survivor 'second chance' at life

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Historic face transplant gives suicide survivor 'second chance' at life

2018-08-15 13:18 Last Updated At：13:18

WARNING - POTENTIALLY DISTURBING CONTENT After attempting suicide three years ago, 21-year-old Katie Stubblefield became the youngest person in the US to receive a face transplant.

The then-18-year-old Katie faced a number of emotion hurdles, having just found out her boyfriend had been texting another girl and recently having her appendix and gallbladder removed in surgery for gastrointestinal problems, she tried to commit suicide by shooting herself with a .308-caliber hunting rifle in a bathroom of her Mississippi home in March 2014.

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Andrea Schneider (Video screencap)

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Katie's older brother, Robert, heard the gunfire found her covered in blood, and recalled, "her face was gone".

Having been left heavily disfigured in the failed suicide attempt, having lost her forehead, nose, sinuses, mouth except for the corners of her lips and much of the bones that make up the jaws and front of her face. Her eyes remained, but they were askew and badly damaged.

“I had never thought of doing that before,” Ms Stubblefield said of her attempt to kill herself. “I felt so guilty that I had put my family through such pain. I felt horrible.”

"There was an older trauma surgeon who basically told us, 'It's the worst wound that I've ever seen of its kind,' and he said, 'The only thing I can think of that would really give her functional life again is a face transplant,' " Robb Stubblefield, Katie's father, said.

"I was standing there thinking, 'What do you mean, a face transfer? What do you do?' "

Up to that point, none of the family had heard of this medical procedure, which involved transplanting all or parts of the facial tissue, including skin, bone, nerves and blood vessels from a donor cadaver onto the recipient.

"I had no clue what a face transplant was," Katie said. "When my parents helped explain everything to me, I was very excited to get a face again and to have function again."

Katie waited for a suitable donor for over a year before Andrea Schneider, a 31-year-old organ donor who had recently passed away, was found as a match. Ms Schneider's grandmother, Sandra Bennington, made the decision to donate Andrea's face.

The transplant, which was performed by 11 surgeons in the span of a 31-hour surgery began May 4, 2017, and aimed to restore Stubblefield’s face and functions such as chewing, breathing and swallowing.

"I am able to touch my face now, and it feels amazing," said Katie. Her father, Robb, helps to decipher some of her thoughts, as Katie still has some trouble speaking clearly: "You take it for granted, the different components of our faces -- the bone, the tissue, the muscle, everything -- but when it's gone, you recognize the big need. Then when you receive a transplant, you're so thankful."

Utah mom killed with 3 kids was a refugee who fled violence in Myanmar

2024-12-20 07:15 Last Updated At：07:21

A Utah mother who police believe was shot and killed by her husband along with three of their children was a refugee who fled violence in Myanmar and dreamed of thriving with her family in the U.S., relatives said Thursday.

Police believe the husband killed his family before shooting himself, and a teenage son was badly wounded.

The bodies of Bu Meh, 38, along with her daughters Kristina Ree, 8, and Nyay Meh, 2, and son Boe Reh, 11, were found in their home in West Valley City, a Salt Lake City suburb, on Tuesday. A handgun was found under the father Dae Reh, 42, leading police to believe this was a murder-suicide, but no evidence of a motive has been released.

One child, 17-year-old Sha Reh, survived being shot in the head and is hospitalized with a severe brain injury, police said.

Bu Meh, a member of Myanmar's Karenni ethnic minority, fled what her relatives described as ethnic cleansing in the Southeast Asian nation about 10 years ago. She and her small family lived for a time in a refugee camp in Thailand, then came to the United States “with little more than the clothing on their backs,” the family said in a statement.

She taught herself English, learned new skills and worked hard to support her growing family, achieving a way of life “far beyond the nightmare of her former country or the refugee camp,” the family said.

“For reasons that we cannot comprehend, her husband robbed her and their children of that security and their very lives,” her family said.

Police believe the shooting happened over the weekend.

Police initially went to the home Monday night after a relative asked them to check on the family but did not find any sign of an emergency that would allow them to enter the home. The relative went to the home Tuesday, saw Sha Reh wounded in the garage and called police, who found the bodies inside the home.

In their statement, relatives called Sha Reh their hero and said he faces a “long and complex road to recovery." An online fundraiser is collecting donations to pay for his care and to help him go to college.

Neighbors hadn’t reported any gunshots in the area over the weekend, police spokesperson Roxeanne Vainuku said at a news conference Wednesday. The family had no previous reports of domestic violence or other disturbances.

This Utah case is the 38th mass killing in the United States this year. At least 165 people have died this year in U.S. mass killings, which are defined by the FBI as cases in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer.