Katie's New Face

By danso - 2 days ago

Showing first level comment(s)

> Much of Katie’s care is being paid for by the Department of Defense, because her youth and ballistic trauma make her a stand-in for wounded warriors. For the rest of her life, she’ll take powerful antirejection drugs with risks of their own, becoming a lifelong subject in the study of this still experimental surgery.

Kudos to the DoD for doing this. The military historically has been the driver for advances in surgery. This will not only benefit Katie, but the knowledge gained from this will also benefit many wounded soldiers in the future.

RcouF1uZ4gsC - 18 hours ago

It takes a brave soul to wake up every day and face the world after sustaining facial damage like that. I start feeling insecure after getting some acne on my face. May she be blessed for remaining strong.

xeromal - 18 hours ago

That was a difficult article (pictures actually) to read. It shows (to me at least) how intimately our humanity is linked to a face that passes our own internal pattern matching heuristics.

I'm not proud to admit my initial thought was not how difficult life must be for her but rather how deformed her face was.

But then I was proud that my (our) inherent human intelligence and morality was able to put that thought aside and wonder what I could do to help her.

SpikeDad - 15 hours ago

As a father to two so-far-healthy young boys, one soon to be a teenager I feel devastated at the thought of either of them having to endure the level of emotional chaos that Katie went through the moments leading up to her suicide attempt. My stomach goes into a knot at the thought. I mean gosh, it was a cheating boyfriend. I don't know what to do to protect them from such a path.

crescentfresh - 17 hours ago

Non-interactive version of the article can be found here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/09/face-tra...

brianyu8 - 18 hours ago

This is an incredible work of journalism, the gravity of which is felt within the opening paragraphs and photos. Really puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

gdubs - 16 hours ago

Notable call-to-action from the article:

> Adrea Schneider’s organs and tissues have helped at least seven people.

> From halting infections to curing blindness, a single donor can save or

> improve more than 70 lives. Enroll to donate organs, eyes, and tissues

> at RegisterMe.org and marrow at BeTheMatch.org. To donate a kidney

> or part of a liver or other organ while alive, contact a transplant center.

qiqing - 15 hours ago

The advancement on face transplant has been amazing to watch. Especially since the largely publicized face transplant for the Mississippi Firefighter two years ago (Patrick Hardison). Does anyone here know how long it takes for the face to "settle in" where the donor face and patient face start fusing? Also I noticed that the eye movements on all these transplants have a distinctive unusual movement to it. Is this a physical limitation where doctors/surgeons cannot operate too closely in the eye area due to the risk of damaaging the eye? Or is does it take a couple years for the muscles near the eye to adapt to the new face?

syntaxing - 19 hours ago

While the two were outside talking about how upset Katie was, she went into the bathroom, put the barrel of Robert’s .308-caliber hunting rifle below her chin, and pulled the trigger. When Robert kicked in the locked door, he found his little sister covered in blood. “And her face is gone,” he recalled

Who puts a loaded hunting rifle in so accessible way in their homes?

sytelus - 9 hours ago

She's pretty brave to go through all of that, so much pain in so many ways.

I think had this been my own situation I'd rather have some kind of plastic prosthetic than someone else's face and a lifetime of rejection treatment. I just don't think my psychology could handle the physical and emotional pain of accepting another face. That said, I know little about living with the alternative that she was dealing with.

Crazy story.

monkeynotes - 18 hours ago