When Richard Norris was 22, he shot himself in the face. In 2012, he received a full facial transplant from a recently-deceased 21-year-old man. In a fascinating profile, Jeanne Marie Laskas describes meeting Norris:
He seems nervous. His hands tremble, bringing constant sips of water to his mouth. His lips can’t quite grip the bottle, so each sip is more a little pour. He fights a constant drool with the help of a towel. His new face is a marvel nonetheless. It’s a new face. Wide and open, the cheekbones of an Irishman and the wrinkle-free complexion of a college kid. It’s difficult to reconcile the youthful face with the body of a man nearly 40. I am trying not to stare. I am trying to stop looking for the seams, where the new connects to the old, the eyelids, the neck, the scar in front of his ears. I am trying to stop thinking about his beard, which isn’t really his beard, except now it is, and it grows. I’m distracted by a thousand little thoughts like these. Coupled with his lack of facial expression—a solid, largely unmoving veneer—in all these ways the barrier to getting to know Richard feels to me immediately and appreciably steep.
Norris now takes medicine “to keep his immune system at 50 percent strength—just enough to ward off common viral and bacteria infections but not so strong that his own antibodies attack his new face”:
“He’s not supposed to smoke,” his mom says. He can’t get sunburn. He can’t get a cold. He can’t drink. He can’t fall and risk injury. He can’t afford to tax his immune system at all. Even a cut could trigger rejection. It starts as a blotchy rash; it means his body is winning the fight to reject the transplant, and Richard has to be flown to the hospital to receive rounds of emergency drugs intravenously. Uncontrollable rejection would mean an almost certain death; the only things left of Richard’s old face are his eyes and the back of his throat. Everything else is now gone for good. “I have to keep watch that his face doesn’t go yellow,” his mom says. “He’s had two rejections so far.”
“I’ll leave you two talking,” Richard says, and he heads outside for a smoke.
The Dish 