BOSTON — The Massachusetts man who received the nation’s second face transplant asked for a mirror four days after the operation.
“I just wanted to see what the new Jim looked like,” James Maki said in an interview with The Boston Globe published Thursday, his first public statements since the April 9 procedure.
Maki stared in wonder and told the doctor who performed the operation, Bohdan Pomahac, that he couldn’t believe he looked so much like he used to.
Pomahac asked what he thought.
“I’m happy,” Maki said.
His daughter, who just graduated from college, cried with joy when she first saw her father.
Maki, 59, still is at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston recovering but is scheduled to go home in about a week. He said he would like to finish his degree and maybe work with fellow Vietnam veterans.
Maki’s face was disfigured in June 2005 when he fell onto the electrified third rail at a Boston subway station. He lost his nose, his upper lip, his cheeks and the roof of his mouth, as well as muscle, bone and nerves.
He rarely went out because people would recoil when they saw him.
Maki, who grew up in Amherst, Mass., said he also struggled with substance abuse.
“My life up to that point was a mess,” he said. “I knew if I had the surgery I’d have a chance for a normal life again.”
He never thought about the possibility of a face transplant until 2007 when he saw Pomahac on television discussing the face-transplant program he planned to start at the hospital.
He underwent the 17-hour operation after a Brookline, Mass., man, Joseph Helfgot, died after a heart transplant. The men were about the same age and had similar skin tone.
During the first couple of weeks after the operation, Maki often checked his face in the bathroom mirror and especially his new top teeth, said his nurse. Doctors eventually will make dentures to fit his bottom jaw.
Maki’s right eye was stitched almost shut to protect it for now because he cannot close it on his own.
Pomahac said it will take several months for Maki’s new face to fully integrate with his original face. As nerve endings grow together, he will increasingly be able to smile, blush, feel pain and chew solid food.
The hospital did not charge Maki for the operation, which cost about $200,000. The doctors donated their time.
Maki has since met with Helfgot’s widow, Susan Whitman. Whitman initiated the visit through the New England Organ Bank “primarily because I wanted him to know that it was OK, that our family was OK, and that he didn’t need to feel guilty.”
She said Maki looked nothing like her husband and that she was surprised at how strong he seemed.
He also met Isabelle Dinoire, the French woman who underwent the world’s first face transplant.
“She seems to be doing really well,” Maki said. “It made me feel good.”
The Boston Globe contributed to this report.
