CHIMP- ATTACK VICTIM STUDIED
Pentagon keen on face transplant
Charla Nash never served in the military. She was horribly disfigured, not in combat, but in a 2009 attack by a rampaging chimpanzee. The U. S. Defence Department, though, is watching her recovery closely.
The U. S. military paid for Nash’s full face transplant in 2011 and is underwriting her followup treatment at a combined cost estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the hope that some of the things it learns can help young, seriously disfigured soldiers returning from war.
In the coming weeks, Nash will take part in a military- funded experiment in which doctors at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital will try to wean her off the anti- rejection drugs she has been taking since the transplant.
Nash jokes about sometimes feeling like a science project. But the 61- year- old daughter of an air force veteran said she gets real satisfaction out of letting the doctors use her for research, and sees it as an opportunity to help wounded soldiers and “do something good out of all of this bad.”
“They asked me, could they? I said, ‘ Yeah, I’d be thrilled to help out in any way I could,’” Nash said.
Nash lost her nose, lips, eyelids and hands when she was mauled by her employer’s 90- kilogram pet chimpanzee. Doctors also had to remove her eyes because of a disease transmitted by the chimp.
She later received new facial features taken from a dead woman. She also underwent a double hand transplant, but it failed when her body rejected the tissue.
Now blind, Nash spends most of her days listening to radio and books on tape — lately, War and Peace — in her modest, second- storey apartment in Boston. She also exercises a couple of days a week with a trainer at a gym to build her strength and stay healthy. A GoFundMe account is being set up to help raise money for prosthetic hands.
Her life today is a stark contrast to her younger years, when she was a barrel racer on the rodeo circuit from the 1970s through the mid1990s. Over the years, she also did some horse- jumping, worked on a farm and manned a computer help desk. She was working as a dispatcher for a towing company at the time of the attack.