Amazing moment a woman meets the man who’s been given her dead brother’s face
IN a gesture that mixes tenderness with curiosity Rebekah Aversano reaches out and touches the face she once knew as her brother’s.
Only now that face belongs to another man – a complete stranger until this poignant encounter.
The face of Miss Aversano’s brother Joshua has been transplanted on to 39-year- old Richard Norris, who had been left horribly disfigured by a shotgun accident.
Joshua, a US marine, was 21 when he was killed by a van crossing a road.
Now, in what is thought to be the first meeting of its kind, Miss Aversano met the man transformed by her brother’s death.
As she looked on her late brother’s face once more, she simply asked: ‘Do you mind if I touch it?’ She then stroked what is now Mr Norris’s cheek, stepped back and said: ‘Wow, this is the face I grew up with.’
Joshua Aversano’s mother Gwen, from Maryland, said: ‘We can definitely see our son in him. We are just so pleased that we have been able to help him.
‘Even though we had such a tragic loss,
‘No one gives me a second look’
we were able to give someone else the benefit of our son.’
The remarkable meeting was caught on film three years after Mr Norris went through one of the most expensive and complex face transplants ever carried out.
In a 36-hour operation, doctors in Baltimore gave him Mr Aversano’s teeth, jaw, lips, nose, part of his tongue and all the facial tissue from the scalp down to the base of his neck.
The transplant was so extensive that little, apart from his brown eyes, is his own.
The surgery, funded by the US Navy to research treatment for injured servicemen, was so successful that he was able to brush his teeth and shave within a week.
He has found love after years of hiding away and is learning how to kiss again.
His own face was destroyed when, as a 22 year old, a 12-bore shotgun went off when he took it from a gun cabinet in his home in rural Virginia.
Horribly disfigured, he retreated into a hermit-like existence, in which he fought addiction and contemplated suicide.
When he did venture out in public, it was usually dark and he hid behind a hat and mask.
He said: ‘I’ve heard all kinds of remarks. A lot of them were really horrible. Now I am able to walk past people and no one gives me a sec- ond look.’ This bears testament to the success of the operation. Doctors try to match donor and recipient by age, skin tone and texture.
However, differences in underlying bone structure mean that the transplanted face is usually a hybrid, identical to neither the donor or recipient but reminiscent of both of them. It is possible to clearly see Mr Aversano in Mr Norris’s new face.
However, despite the resemblance, he thinks of the face as his own. He said: ‘When I look in the mirror, I see Richard Norris.’