Four years after she shot herself in the face in a botched suicide attempt that left her grossly disfigured at age 18, Katie Stubblefield has become the youngest person in America to receive a face transplant.
Now 21 years old, Katie is giving thanks to her faith, family and the work of a host of medical experts from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio where she underwent an intense 31-hour full-face transplant for her second chance at life.
“To reach this point of recovery has oftentimes been a difficult road to travel, but I’m thankful there’s been a road,” she said in a Cleveland Clinic release.
The injury to Katie’s face had left her unable to see, speak, breathe through her nose, swallow food, chew or move her tongue. The groundbreaking procedure replaced 100 percent of Katie’s facial tissue, and required the skills of experts from 15 specialties, including 11 surgeons who worked in two operating rooms.
Doctors replaced Katie’s scalp, forehead, upper and lower eyelids, eye sockets, nose, upper cheeks, upper jaw and half her lower jaw, upper and lower teeth, some facial nerves, facial muscles and skin to give her her new look.
Katie’s journey is chronicled in an extensive and graphic report by National Geographic in which her will to live is much more palpable than that fateful day in 2014 when her teenage self thought she would be better off dead.
“I’m just very thankful to be alive,” Katie said in…
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