Connie Culp, former BVRS client, has become the first person in the United States to receive a near-total face transplant.

A multi-disciplinary team of doctors and surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic spent 22 hours replacing 80 percent of Mrs. Culp’s face that was shattered in a 2004 shotgun blast.

Mrs. Culp received the face from a cadaver on December 2008.  Of her deceased donor, she said, “I love her.”

In what has been called the largest and most complex face transplant in the world, surgeons integrated different functional components such as nose and lower eyelids, as well as different tissue types including skin, muscles, bony structures, arteries, veins and nerves. Only left untouched were her upper eyelids, forehead, lower lip and chin.

In customary humor that endeared her to BVRS staff and fellow clients, Mrs. Culp said, “It’s great to have a nose again.”

While she has shown no signs of rejecting the new face, Mrs. Culp will have to take anti rejection medication for the rest of her life. She is able to smell and breathe through her nose and can taste and eat solid food again. Most importantly, she is mostly out of pain.

Mrs. Culp credits BVRS’s Personal Adjustment to Blindness Training Program, which she attended from August 2007 through February 2008, for providing tremendous emotional support as well as teaching her how to live independently before she underwent reconstructive surgery.

 “When I first got there, I was so down and the (BVRS) staff motivated me so much. What’s wonderful is having all the people there who can help you in so many ways all in one place to work out all the problems together.

“I learned how to use a cane and cross streets, how to get around in the kitchen, they taught me Braille. Ken Wojtczak taught me how to wire a house and take a sink apart and put it back together again. Now I can get around and do for myself. I tell everyone who needs services to call (BVRS).”
Mrs. Culp said she hopes to return to BVRS for vocational services.

Mrs. Culp was blinded and disfigured in September 2004 in a murder-suicide attempt in Hopedale, Ohio, when her husband Thomas, shot her in the face from just eight feet way, then turned the gun on himself. Both survived. Mr. Culp was convicted in 2005 and sentenced to seven years in prison.

The blast shattered Mrs. Culp’s nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye. Hundreds of fragments of shotgun pellet and bone splinters were embedded in her face. She could only eat liquids through a straw, was unable to smell and able to breathe through a hollow tube surgically inserted in her trachea.

The clinic expects to absorb the cost of the transplant, estimated between $250,000 to $300,000, because it was experimental. The transplant team was led by Maria Siemionow, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Plastic Surgery Research and Head of Microsurgery Training at Cleveland Clinic.