Charla Nash, mauled by chimp, faces public

A woman whose face and hands were ripped off in a horrifying attack by a pet chimpanzee has showed the incredible results of her face transplant surgery.
Charla Nash, a 56-year-old single mother from Stamford, Connecticut, nearly died after the mauling two years ago.
She had tried to catch her boss' pet chimp Travis after he escaped – but the 14-year-old male ape turned on her and tore off her hands, nose, lips and eyelids.


Six months ago, Ms Nash underwent a 20-hour operation which left her with a new face, prosthetic eyes and new hands.
Although a serious infection meant the hands had to be removed, she can now smell again, eat solid food – and says her new face ’has really given me a life back’.


I’ve had people tell me I’m beautiful and nobody ever told me I was beautiful before,’ she told the Today show.
Of the family who donated the face of their loved one, she said: ‘Words can’t even say enough. It’s really given me a life back. It’s such a wonderful thing. I cannot thank them enough.'


She told Today that a little girl approached her on the first day she went out without a veil and said hello.
'That didn't happen before,' she said. 'It was nice. The little girl was saying 'Hi' to me...I'm not scaring anybody.'
Ms Nash’s doctors say her face will not resemble the donor’s and will instead mould to her own bone structure.
‘What we have seen is that the face almost blends in and becomes the patient’s own to the point that a regular person passing by will not even be able to tell,’ Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, told the Today Show.


“I’ve had people tell me I’m beautiful,” Nash told “Today” interviewer Meredith Vieira. “And they were not telling me I was beautiful before.”


Nash said she recently visited a store with her brother and was heartened when a young girl said hello to her.


“It was nice,” she explained.


“I looked like I’ve got eyes and everything ... I’m not scaring anybody.”


Nash was brutally attacked by her friend’s pet chimp, Travis, in Stamford, Conn., in February 2009.


The animal nearly killed the 57-year-old mother, ripping off her face and both her hands and leaving her permanently blind.


After years of rehabilitation, Nash recently underwent ground-breaking surgery at Boston’s Brigham and Women's Hospital, where doctors replaced her face and both hands.


Medical complications forced doctors to remove the hands shortly after they were attached, but they may attempt the transplant again within the year.


“I found out later on that they — I had hands and they removed them," Nash told Vieira.


“And it didn't really bother me because I was too sick to worry about that, you know? … And then later on, I was disappointed that, you know, I had them and they're gone again.


“But I'm hoping, you know, for in the future, that it can be done again.”


Nash is now able to chew food and smell again and her daughter, Briana, said she feels like she’s starting to get her mother back.


“She looks similar,” she said.


“I mean the nose is very similar. I’m still waiting for the underlying bone structure to take some shape on her cheeks.