A suicidal Wyoming man so intent on ending his life that he shoved a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, has a new lease on life, thanks to eight operations that gave him another person’s face.
Eleven years after his botched suicide try, Andy Sandness now has the nose, lips, mouth, cheeks, jaw, chin, and even the teeth of a 21-year-old Midwestern man who killed himself last year, according to family members and doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, which performed the operation, it’s first face transplant.
“It far exceeded my expectations,” according to Sandness, 32, who can’t speak yet, and instead, wrote it in a notebook following his first look at his new face in December.
His overjoyed father added: “Once you lose something that you’ve had forever, you know what it’s like not to have it — and once you get a second chance to have it back, you never forget it.”
Sandness, an electrician from New Castle, was hopelessly depressed when he tried to shoot himself in the head in December 2006, he said.
But he knew the second he pulled the trigger, that it was a mistake.
“Please, please don’t let me die!” he begged medics who raced to to his rescue.
Last year, he set out to find a facial donor and added his name to a waiting list United Network for Organ Sharing.
In June, Calen “Rudy” Ross, an outdoorsman from the Midwest, fatally shot himself while his 19-year-old wife, Lilly, was eight months pregnant.
One of Ross’s last wishes was to donate his organs — including his face — so Lily met with a rep from LifeSource, a nonprofit group that helps families facilitate organ and tissue donation.
“I was skeptical at first,” Lilly said. “I didn’t want to walk around and all of a sudden see Calen.”
But she agreed to donate his face after reps explained Sandness would keep his eyes and forehead — and that he wouldn’t look exactly like her late husband, she said.
The final operation was an all hands on deck 56-hour marathon — taking 60 surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists and others, officials said.
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