Kate’s New Face
This is a life passage rarely seen—the transfer of both physical face and personal identity from one young woman to another. Katie Stubblefield destroyed her face during a suicide attempt. She used her brother’s shot gun. Blindness, pain, years of waiting, then—she got the call from Cleveland Clinic, “We have a transplant donor for you.” The transplant team led by Drs. Papay and Gastman, supported by dozens of medical personnel, gathered in adjoining operating rooms—one for the donor, the other for Katie. From surgical harvest to painstaking reconnection took 37 hours. Katie has had several faces, her mother said and now she has another—a completely new identity. There was a moment in surgery, when the face was without an owner, a moment in between, made possible by advancements in medicine and technology that one couldn’t have imagined even a few years ago. Now, Katie’s new life is pain and mission woven together, as she dreams of helping others in their battle with depression and suicide.
