The man who’s had three faces

Jérôme has become the first person to have endured the agonising process of having a second face transplant

FOR two months he lay alone in a darkened hospital room, in agony and unable to talk, see or hear. He was what his surgeon called “the walking dead” – able to move and breathe, but nothing else. He had no ears, eyelids or lips and was unable to speak or eat. In fact, he had no face at all – just an open mess of nerve endings and blood vessels. As a result he was also at severe risk of infection.

No one could visit him, apart from medical staff wearing layers of sterile protective gear, and he couldn’t do anything but lie there and pray for a miracle.

Then one arrived – and Jérôme Hamon promptly made medical history.

Earlier this year the 43-year-old Frenchman became the first person in the world to have had two face transplants when he received the face of a 22-year-old man.

He’s now been dubbed the man with three faces and has been given a new lease of life again – although he still has a long road ahead of him.

His new face, which was unveiled by his surgeons recently, looks uncannily smooth and is immobile, although this will improve gradually as his muscles start functioning better and his face bonds with his scalp. This will also help get his ears and eyes in alignment.

Because Jérôme’s lips don’t move, his tongue drags and a build-up of saliva makes it difficult for him to speak. But in an interview at the Hôpital Européen Georges-Pompidou in Paris where a team of crack surgeons operated on him, he addressed a fascinated world.

LEFT: Frenchman Jérôme Hamon, whose face was deformed by disease, has had a harrowing series of operations. ABOVE: Face transplant specialist Professor Laurent Lantieri performed the second transplant. “I still have moments when I feel exhausted,” he said. “But overall I feel well.”

WELL is something Jérôme has hardly ever been in his life. He was born with neurofibromatosis type 1, a chronic condition that causes changes in skin colouring and the growth of tumours along nerves in the skin, brain and other body parts.

In Jérôme’s case, his face became deformed by grotesque growths that lent him a monstrous appearance.

Then something happened that gave him hope. In 2005 doctors performed the first face transplant in northern France and although the procedure needed finetuning, it was a promising start.

Jérôme went on the transplant list and in 2010 he received the face of a 63-yearold man. For a while all went well and in 2015 he finally felt confident to face the world for the first time – before that he’d been known only as Jérôme.

In an interview with the France 2 TV station he told how the surgery had completely changed his life.

“I told myself right away, this is my new face,” he said. “There was acceptance immediately.”

But months after the interview he came down with a cold and the consequences were disastrous: the antibiotic he was prescribed compromised his immune system and interfered with his anti-rejection drugs.

By the following year it became clear his system was rejecting his donor face and the tissue was systematically deteriorating.

In October 2017 Jérôme was back on the donor waiting list and a month later his face had crumbled to such an extent it had to be removed entirely to prevent the rest of his body dying with it, doctors said.

Which is how he found himself cut off from the world in an isolated hospital room for weeks on end. And then his second chance arrived. To prepare for transplant No 2, all Jérôme’s blood had to be replaced to flush out antibodies from previous operations to prevent rejection – a procedure that took a full month.

Professor Laurent Lantieri, a respected French surgeon who specialises in hand and face transplants, performed the operation and pronounced it a success.

“Today we know a double transplant is feasible,” he told Le Parisien newspaper. “It’s no longer in the field of research. The proof is right here.”

Bernard Cholley, the anaesthetist on the transplant team, praised Jérôme’s bravery. “Anyone who loses their face

Sand then has to wait for a transplant for an unknown length of time – that’s something no one [on the team] has ever had to go through.

“I’m amazed by the courage of a patient who’s been able to get through such an ordeal.”

Jérôme is now being monitored like any other face transplant patient, Lantieri says. “For a man who went through all this, which is like going through a nuclear war, he’s doing fine.”

Doctors still don’t know how long face transplants can “last”, says plastic surgeon Bohdan Pomahac of Harvard University in America, although it’s predicted to be between 10 and 15 years.

“Chronic rejection is a reality,” Pomahac adds. “Face transplants will become essentially nonfunctional and distorted and that may be a good time to consider retransplanting.”

But that’s something Jérôme can’t think about right now. Little is known about his private life but it’s emerged that eight weeks after his transplant he was allowed out of hospital for a weekend with his family in Bretagne. He’s now slowly trying to get back his health and mobility.

“The first transplant I accepted immediately,” he told the media. “I thought, ‘This is my new face’, and this time, it’s the same. If I hadn’t accepted it, it would’ve been terrible. It’s a question of identity. “But here we are. It’s good. It’s me.” And, he added, “I’m 43 years old. The donor was 22 years old. So now I’m 22 years old too!”