The life story of Patrick Hardison from Mississippi is nothing less than a mind-blowing one. This man is the first American who has received a face transplant back in 2015 after his face and neck were left completely disfigured during a house fire.
Patrick’s life was a great one up until the day the tragedy struck in 2001.
He worked as a volunteer firefighter earlier in his life, so when he got called to help with a house fire, he didn’t hesitate. Sadly, once he entered the burning place, it collapsed on top of him and trapped him. He couldn’t move and his torso and face were severely burnt.
“[My mask] was melting to my face,” Patrick recalled. “My hose [was] already melted.”
“For somebody who does what we do for a living, I’ve never seen anybody burned that bad that was still alive,” friend and first responder Jimmy Neal told CBS News of seeing Patrick after the accident.
Patrick suffered third degree burns on his face and scalp. He also sustained burns to his head, neck, and upper torso. The fire also claimed his ears, lips, most of his nose, and even most of his eyelid tissue.
“I didn’t actually see myself until probably November. I got injured in September,” Patrick told Fox News. “They had cut a little pinhole in one of my eyelids because they had everything covered, skin graft. I looked in the mirror and all I could do, I said, ‘this is it? I can’t do this,’” he recalled.
Over the years, this man was forced to undergo over 70 surgeries, as well as other procedures. He couldn’t close his eyes and doctors were able to put together flaps of skin to protect his vision, but he was still facing the risk of going blind.
Patrick couldn’t eat without feeling excruciating pain. He just couldn’t get used to this life because he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror. Wherever he went, everyone starred at him, and he could barely stand being around people, even his children.
In order to hide and protect himself, Patrick wore sunglasses and a baseball cap all the time. He also had ear prosthetic.
“I had kids. It was just a tough time. I never got a day off from the injury. When you walk out in public, it was daily. And, you know, it’s just so — there’s no way to explain everything,” he told Yahoo! Sports.
“You go to the ball field, you have to prepare yourself for the kid that goes running off screaming.”
Years went by and Patrick lost hope of ever having a normal life. But then, French woman named Isabelle Dinoire received a partial face transplant after her face was severely disfigured by her pet dog. This procedure was revolutionary. It was the first ever of that kind. Surely, it gave a glimpse of hope to Patrick who at that point was truly struggling.
Patrick met doctor Eduardo D. Rodriguez from the NYU Langone Medical Center in New York who told him he would do the transplant surgery if they find a matching donor. It wasn’t easy, but one day, out of the blue, a donor appeared. LiveOnNY, a nonprofit that coordinates organ donations in the New York area, had found a match. The face Patrick was about to get belonged to 26-year-old David Rodebaugh who had sustained a massive head injury in a bike accident and had been declared brain dead.
This young man’s mother, Nancy Millar, decided to donate her son’s organs, including his face. “I said, ‘You better save his face. He has the face of a porcelain doll.’ And he’s a donor — we had talked about it,” Millar told People.
The thought of someone receiving her son’s face meant that David would continue to live on through the people whose lives he was about to save, including Patrick’s.
“When I met Patrick, I saw this strength, this strong, manly, burly kind of energy in him — that David had,” Nancy recalled.
“David wanted to be a firefighter, an I knew if this guy was a firefighter — he was willing to walk into a fire to save people and risk his own life — then he had the strength that David had.”
Finally, the day of the transplant surgery had arrived. The procedure lasted for 26 long hours and was performed by a team of 100 professionals.
The risk was enormous and Patrick was given a 50/50 percent chance of survival. Luckily, it was a huge success. Patrick received a new face, scalp, ears, and ear canals. He also received eyelids which allowed him to blink naturally and save his vision.
“Everything in life has a risk,” Patrick told Time Magazine.
“When it’s your time to go, you’ll go—whether you’re walking down the street and get hit by a car or you’re lying on the operating table.”
After he recovered from the swelling and he learned how to talk and swallow again, Patrick met his donor’s mother. Nancy only had one request, to kiss Patrick on the forehead.
“I said, ‘Can I kiss your forehead?’” Nancy said. “That’s the one thing I wanted to do because every night before David went to bed when he was little, I kissed his forehead.”
“I’ve been waiting a year to meet her. I’m just very grateful,” Patrick added. “Without her, it wouldn’t have been possible. It’s like she’s family. We connected that easily.”
Ever since the surgery, Patrick is taking anti-rejection drugs that prevent his immune system from rejecting the face, but he’s thriving. He didn’t only receive a new face but a new life too.
Today, he is divorced and is working on a book which he hopes would serve as an inspiration to anyone who believes there is no way out from the situation they have found themselves in. “Because I want to show the world that you can have hope. I wouldn’t want people that were like me years ago to think that’s it, I have to live like this. You don’t. You can accomplish anything,” Patrick says.
His survival and his recovery are dubbed miraculous. Thanks to Nancy, Dr. Rodriguez and his team, and Patrick’s strong will, today, he is a happy man.
Watch What Whoopi Said To Liz Cheney During A Recent Episode Of ‘The View’
Liz Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney and one of the most anti-Trump members of the GOP, lost her seat in Wyoming to Harriet Hageman but now is being encouraged by far-Ieft Whoopi Goldberg to run for the presidency in 2024.
Such is what Whoopi said during a recent episode of “The View” on which Liz Cheney appeared. During the episode, Whoopi clutched her pearls and claimed that Trump wants to be a dictator for life while begging Liz Cheney to run as a third party to sink Trump’s presidentiaI bid and save America from that supposed dictatorship.
Beginning, Whoopi, a constant voice of the left, pretended to care about the survival of the GOP and asked Cheney if she would consider running as a third party in 2024 to sink Trump’s presidential bid. She said, Do you see yourself, and I, and would you ever consider being the conduit to that third party? Because I don’t know if the Republican Party as we as we knew it, will survive this.
Whoopi Wants Liz Cheney to Run in 2024
Continuing, Whoopi then expounded on her fears of Trump and what he will do if eIected, saying that she fears that Trump will try to be a “dictator for life” if he wins.
She said, Because if he ever gets in again, we’ll never have any more elections, there will be no more. He will stop it. And he’s very cIear about he wants to be dictator for life.
Whoopi then repeated her main question, again asking Cheney if she would consider stepping into a third-party role to try to stop Trump in 2024. She asked, Okay, so I wonder, would you ever consider, pIease would you consider being that person?
Next, Whoopi returned to expounding on a tangentially related subject, ranting about people who pretended they would back Cheney and then ditched her and sided with Trump instead.
She said, Because I gotta tell you, it. I was really, I don’t understand how people can say, ‘we’re with you. We’re with you. We’re with you.’ And then when you need them, they go, Oh, but we’re with him. Now. I don’t understand that.
ConcIuding, she said, “And I don’t understand how you find the grace not to be pissed at folks. Oh, I’m not, you know. You’re mad at him, but you’re not pissed at him.
Because if you were pissed at him, you would have given up on him and you have out well, and so would you. Cheney, for her part, responded to Whoopi’s plea by saying, I think honestly, Whoopi, that there are millions of Americans — I think the majority of Americans agree with what you just said in terms of the need for us to be able to say, you know, let’s have the debates about policy and substance, but we love our country more than our political party, and going forward, we have to be able to come together.
Leave a Reply