Joseph will take immunosuppressant medications for the rest of his life to prevent his body rejecting the transplants, and continues to undergo rehab.įour months post-transplant surgery, Joseph is able to dress, feed himself, throw a ball to his dog Buster, use light free weights and machines, and is practicing his golf swing. The Top 5 are: Machine Gun Jack McGurn, Abe Kid Twist Reles, Roy DeMeo, Joe The Animal Barboza and Giovanni Brusca. Joseph spent 57 days in inpatient rehab before moving to outpatient care, putting in five hours a day of hand therapy, occupational therapy, face therapy, and physical therapy. The richness of the stories, the amount of dependable research material and how the individuals fit into the greater context of their times mattered more to us than the number of victims they chalked up. Joseph DiMeo became the first person in the world to successfully undergo a double face and hand transplant. The six teams simultaneously operated in two rooms, one for the donor and another for the recipient. Rodriguez and his surgical team of 16 and operating room team of 80 completed the groundbreaking 23 hour surgery. Due to the complex procedures he'd already endured, there was only about a 6% chance of finding a perfect match, so the search was expanded nationwide.įinally a match was found! On August 12th 2020, Dr. Rodriguez at NYU Langone, the only hospital in New York State and only one of a handful in the country with a dedicated program for face transplantation.Īfter being approved for the operation in October 2019, Joseph needed a donor. There was nothing else doctors could do with conventional surgeries to give him a better quality of life, so he was referred to Dr. He underwent about 20 reconstructive surgeries, and had his fingertips amputated. Joseph was in a medically induced coma for more than two and half months after his accident, and remained in the burn unit of Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey, for more than four months. He had no lips or eyelids, and his fingertips were useless. Joseph had third-degree burns on about 80% of his body, an injury most people don't survive. The car hit a curb and utility pole, flipped over, and erupted into flames.Ī good Samaritan pulled over, leapt across a traffic median, and yanked Joseph to safety. Joseph DiMeo was driving home from a night shift in July 2018 when he fell asleep at the wheel.
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