SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A woman whose natural voice could have been silenced forever because of vocal-cord damage is able to talk again after undergoing a rare voice-box transplant.
Brenda Charett Jensen, 52, reunited Thursday with the team of surgeons who performed the delicate operation in October, only the second surgery of its kind performed in the United States.
“It’s just been amazing — simply, simply amazing. And I’m still in shock,” Jensen said in a raspy voice at a news conference with her doctors.
Jensen damaged her vocal cords more than a decade ago after she repeatedly pulled out her breathing tube while under sedation in the hospital. Because the injury left her breathing passage completely closed, the Modesto woman had also been unable to smell — a sensation she is enjoying again.
Before the transplant, Jensen “talked” with the help of a hand-held device that produces an electronic voice. After years of putting up with humiliation and teasing, “I was game to go. I wanted to talk again,” she said.
In 1998, doctors in Cleveland performed the world’s first successful larynx transplant.
