‘Kids ran screaming when the saw me… now I’m just an average guy’: Firefighter whose features ‘melted’ while tackling a blaze is given a brand new face in the most extensive transplant ever performed
- Former firefighter Pat Hardison, 41, was given face of David Rodebaugh, 26
- Hardison’s face was badly burned while he tackled a house fire in 2001
- His children were terrified of his disfigured face afterwards
- In August this year Rodebaugh died following a cycling accident
- His mom agreed to the transplant, saying he had wanted to be a firefighter
- The 26-hour face transplant was led by Dr Eduardo Rodriguez at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York
- Hardison is now expected to regain normal eyesight thanks to the surgery
A former firefighter whose face was so horrifically burnt while tackling a blaze that he ‘scared his own children’ has been given a brand new one in the most extensive transplant ever performed.
Pat Hardison now wears the face of David Rodebaugh – a 26-year-old who died in August following a cycling accident.
The procedure – which was the riskiest face transplant carried out to date – has left Hardison feeling normal again and it should restore his impaired sight, too.
The Tennessee man was told he had only a 50 per cent chance of surviving the surgery but it was a risk he was willing to take.
He said he had been left so horrifically disfigured that young children – including his own – ran away screaming at the sight of him.
Hardison’s face had ‘melted’ off during a fire at a mobile home in Senatobia, Mississippi, on September 5, 2001.
- Recalling the incident, he told ABC: ‘It was just a normal day. Just like every other fire…we went in looking for a lady.’
He entered the house with three other firefighters but the ceiling collapsed around him.
‘[My mask] was melting to my face,’ Hardison said. ‘My hose [was] already melted.’
He pulled the mask off, held his breath and closed his eyes, which doctors say saved his sight and prevented smoke from damaging his throat and lungs.
Volunteer firefighter Bricky Cole later described the horrible moment Hardison came out of the house.
‘His face was smoking and flesh was melting off,’ Cole recalled. ‘It was all char.’
The former firefighter spent 63 days in hospital and was given the semblance of a face with flesh taken from his thighs. He had lost his ears, lips, most of his nose and virtually all of his eyelid tissue.
Because of this, he was unable to see properly.
When he returned home, he recalled how his three young children, Alison, six, Dalton, three and Averi, two, were terrified of him.
He told ABC: ‘My kids were scared of me. You can’t blame them. They’re young kids.’
He playfully told them and other curious children that he had fought a bear but they ‘ran screaming and crying when they saw me. There are things worse than dying.’
In the painful years that followed, Hardison underwent 71 operations (at a rate of around seven a year) to try to rebuild his mouth, nose and eyelids using skin grafts. His continuing ordeal meant he soon spiralled into depression.
10 YEARS OF FACIAL TRANSPLANTS
The first partial facial transplant was done in 2005 on Isabelle Dinoire, a 38-year-old French woman who had been bitten by a dog.
The first operation in the US was performed in December 2008 on Connie Culp, 46, from Cleveland who was shot by her husband four years earlier.
In Spain in 2010, a 31-year-old man named only as Oscar, a farmer who accidentally shot himself in the face, was given what was then described as the world’s first full facial transplant.
Even though he had two more children, Braden and Cullen after the accident, the impact of his accident put a huge strain on his family life and after ten years of marriage, he and his wife Chrissi divorced.
Further tragedy followed when he was declared bankrupt and lost his home. He later explained that during the years of agonizing operations and recoveries, he had become addicted to pain-killers, which impacted on his new tire shop business.
His story was first revealed in an interview with the New York magazine yesterday.
Eventually a church friend of Hardison’s wrote to Dr Rodriguez, who had performed a 2012 face transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
The doctor said he would try to help, and in August 2014 Hardison was placed on a waiting list.
He needed a donor who matched his skin color, hair color and blood type, as well as skeletal structure.
A year later, Rodebaugh was identified as a potential donor by LiveOnNY, the nonprofit organization that seeks transplant organs and tissue in the New York City area.
Rodeburgh had crashed and hit his head while riding his bike in July this year. A few weeks later, he was declared brain-dead at the hospital.
When a representative with LiveOnNY approached his mother about donating his face, she accepted, noting how he had always wanted to be a firefighter.
Rodebaugh’s heart, liver and kidneys were also donated to other patients, along with his corneas, bone and skin tissue.
During the face transplant, Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez removed the donor’s face and scalp, including the outer skin, tissue, nerves and muscle, as the surgical team removed the skin on Hardison’s face.
Rodriguez then placed the donor face on Hardison and connected the blood vessels.
More than 100 doctors, nurses, technical and support staff took part in the 26-hour operation, conducted in mid-August at the NYU Langone Medical Center.
Now three months later, Hardison is still recovering but with his new eyelids and more surgery, is expected to regain a normal field of vision for the first time in more than a decade.
He will have to continue taking medications to prevent his body from rejecting the transplant.
Eventually, ‘a casual observer will not notice anything that is odd’ in Hardison’s new face, which will be a blend of features of his original face and the donor’s, Dr Rodriguez said.
Hardison said his new face has already made a difference when he goes outside.
He said: ‘I used to get stared at all the time, but now I’m just an average guy.’
He now hopes to do motivational speaking and helping wounded veterans. He has also set the ambitious target of learning to drive again.
His message? ‘Just how there is hope.’
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