The first US face transplant patient has braved the glare of publicity to show what modern medicine can do.
Connie Culp's new look is a far cry from the puckered, noseless sight that made children run away in horror five years ago after a shotgun blast took away the centre of her face..
Her expressions are still a bit wooden, but she can talk, smile, smell and taste her food again.
Her speech is at times a little tough to understand. Her face is bloated and squarish, and her skin droops in big folds that doctors plan to pare away as her circulation improves and her nerves grow, animating her new muscles.
But she had nothing but praise for those who made her new face possible.
"I guess I'm the one you came to see today," the 46-year-old Ohio woman said at a news conference at the Cleveland Clinic, where the groundbreaking operation was performed. But "I think it's more important that you focus on the donor family that made it so I could have this person's face."
Until Tuesday Mrs Culp's identity and how she came to be disfigured were a secret. Her husband, Thomas, shot her in 2004, then turned the gun on himself. He went to prison for seven years. His wife was left clinging to life. The blast shattered her nose, cheeks, the roof of her mouth and an eye.
A plastic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, Dr Risal Djohan, looked at her injuries two months later. "He told me he didn't think, he wasn't sure, if he could fix me, but he'd try," Mrs Culp recalled.
On December 10, in a 22-hour operation, Dr Maria Siemionow led a team of doctors who replaced 80% of Mrs Culp's face with bone, muscles, nerves, skin and blood vessels from another woman who had just died. It was the fourth face transplant in the world, although the others were not as extensive.
No information has been released about the donor or how she died, but her family members were moved when they saw before-and-after pictures of Mrs Culp, Dr Siemionow said.
That is so amazing, well done to the medical team
