More than a decade after the Patrick Hardison face transplant made medical history in New York, the Mississippi firefighter is still living proof of what a donor’s gift can do. In 2015, surgeons at NYU Langone Medical Center gave him a new face, scalp, ears and eyelids in a 26-hour operation that he had only an even chance of surviving.
It was, at the time, the most extensive face transplant ever performed. It came 14 years after a fire took almost everything that made his face his own.
The fire that changed everything
In September 2001, Hardison was working as a volunteer firefighter when he went into a burning house to rescue a woman he believed was trapped inside. The building collapsed on him. His mask began melting onto his skin, and by the time he escaped through a window, his head and upper body were on fire.
A fellow first responder later said he had never seen anyone burned that badly who was still alive. Hardison had third-degree burns across his entire face and scalp. He lost his ears, his lips, most of his nose and most of his eyelid tissue.
He didn’t see his own reflection until November, two months after the fire. He later told Fox News that his first reaction was that he couldn’t live like that.
Seventy-one surgeries and a life in hiding
Doctors operated on him 71 times. None of it gave him back a normal face. He couldn’t blink or fully close his eyes, and eating or laughing hurt. Surgeons used skin flaps to protect his eyes, but he still faced the risk of slowly going blind.
In public, he hid behind a baseball cap, sunglasses and prosthetic ears. At his children’s ball games, he had to brace himself for kids who ran away screaming when they saw him. The staring never let up, and for years he believed this was simply how the rest of his life would look.
Face transplants were no longer science fiction by then. Isabelle Dinoire of France became the first person to receive one in 2005. But Hardison had largely given up hope of getting one himself.
The donor who made it possible
A friend’s discovery changed that. Dr. Eduardo D. Rodriguez, a plastic surgeon at NYU Langone who had already performed a face transplant, agreed to take Hardison on, and the search for a donor began.
It was slow and discouraging. In the first year, only two candidates emerged. One looked right but had the wrong tissue profile. The other family withdrew their relative from consideration.
Then LiveOnNY, the nonprofit that coordinates organ donation in the New York area, found a match. David Rodebaugh was a 26-year-old artist and cyclist who had suffered a catastrophic head injury in a bike accident and was declared brain dead. His mother, Nancy Millar, had already agreed to donate his heart, liver and kidneys. She also agreed to donate his face.
Millar later said she felt a kinship with Hardison. Her son had dreamed of becoming a firefighter, and she saw in Hardison the same kind of strength David had.
Patrick Hardison’s face transplant: 26 hours in theater
Rodriguez assembled a team of more than 100 doctors, nurses and support staff, split into two groups. Over 26 hours in August 2015, they gave Hardison a new face, scalp, ears and ear canals, along with portions of bone from the chin and cheeks and an entire nose. The new eyelids meant he could blink properly again.
Before the operation, Hardison said goodbye to his family in case he didn’t wake up. His eldest daughter, Alison, asked him why he would take that risk. He told her he wanted to walk her down the aisle without a cap and sunglasses. She later told CBS News that his answer settled it for her.
The first week was frightening. There were late-night scares over his blood pressure and his airway. The swelling was so severe that he couldn’t close his mouth, and he had to learn to speak and swallow all over again.
Meeting the mother of his donor
A year later, Hardison met Nancy Millar. She asked if she could kiss his forehead, something she had done every night when David was a little boy.
In a statement released through NYU Langone, Hardison said he had prayed for his donor’s family every day before he even knew who they were. He thanked Rodriguez’s team for giving him far more than a new face. “They have given me a new life,” he said.
He will take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his life to keep his immune system from attacking the transplant. The swelling has long since gone down, and his face has healed well.
In 2021, the father of five told Fox News he had bought his own place, was building a house and was writing a book. He wants people living with severe injuries to know that their situation doesn’t have to be the end of the story.
