By Dan Fastenberg
NEW YORK (Reuters) – At 22, Joe DiMeo is rediscovering a range of sensations in his hands and face, from heat to cold and humidity to someone else’s touch.
DiMeo is still getting used to his hands and face. He has had them for less than six months, the product of revolutionary surgery after an accident that left stumps where his fingers used to be and his face was severely disfigured.
“You know, it’s really surprising to me when something new plays or I play something new and I can feel it for the first time,” he said in an interview.
While he strives for hours on a rehab day, DiMeo said he is moved by the goal of moving out of his parents’ home in Clark Township, New Jersey, and even getting behind the wheel of a car.
“Driving is the biggest goal I have so far,” he said.
It was driving that started his nightmare.
Returning home from night work as a product tester on July 14, 2018, DiMeo’s car crashed, overturned and exploded, leaving him with third-degree burns on 80% of his body.
He spent four months in the burn unit at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey, part of the time in an induced coma, and underwent about 20 reconstructive surgeries that still left him with limited use of his hands and face.
Lucky to be alive, DiMeo was referred in March 2019 to Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez, who heads the plastic surgery department at NYU Langone Health and had already performed three successful face transplants.
On August 12, Rodriguez led a team of more than 140 surgeons, nurses and other teams in a 23-hour procedure that gave DiMeo a new face and a pair of hands in the first double transplant ever performed.
“We wanted to make him not just an operation that would make him look better, but also that it would work optimally, especially with his hands,” said Rodriguez.
DiMeo’s recovery is still a work in progress, with up to five hours of rehabilitation a day, but Rodriguez said his patient is doing very well.
“It’s proof of him as an individual, his commitment to his therapy and his willingness not to give up,” said Rodriguez.
DiMeo marks his progress by reflecting on the things he is now able to do, such as preparing his own breakfast and doing his workouts alone. But he is not slowing down.
“I see myself, you know? It’s coming back very fast … It’s me now,” he said. “You just have to deal with the punches, whatever life throws at you.”
(Reporting by Dan Fastenberg; Writing by Peter Szekely; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)