Transplant recipient learns to accept his fate, and his new face

From the start, Dallas Wiens has believed that the face he woke up with after surgery was his own.

Not a mask — not the nose, eyelids, lips, hair, skin or gray-tinged beard of another man — but his own face.

"To me, it is who I am," said Wiens, 26. "It's me."

As the country's first full-face transplant recipient during groundbreaking surgery in Boston, Wiens has not only accepted, but embraced his face and his fate.

"Every day when I wake, I look forward to getting up," he said. "I thank God and the donor's family that I wake up to a miracle every day."

For the first time since the 2008 accident that cost him his sight and erased his facial features, he can feel his daughter's kiss brush his cheek, smell lasagna cooking and recognize the scent of a friend's perfume. He is especially pleased with his nose and can breathe deeply, and even sneeze.

Since the transplant in March there have been no episodes of rejection. Despite a few rough spots after the surgery when the medications made him feel awful and the ordeal zapped his energy, Wiens has gained 12 pounds and is bouncing back.

As the swelling has gone down, Wiens has gotten to know this new face with no forehead wrinkles, some graying whiskers and a barely visible scar where old and new connect.

So convinced is Wiens that his body has totally accepted the transplant — from an anonymous older donor whom he knows little about — that when he runs his fingers through his new dark brown hair, he says it feels just like it did before the accident.

"My body is changing the hair color," said Wiens, who attributes the texture and color change to hormones. "I have gray hair now exactly where I had gray hair before."

It is an observation made by a man who cannot see the changes himself, but who is so highly attuned to his body that he can tell when he is getting sick days before symptoms appear.

He knows, too, how important it is to his recovery that he accepts the face, not just physically, but mentally.

This resiliency and ironclad commitment to life is typical of Wiens, who is living with his grandparents in Fort Worth.

"You won't meet too many people in life like Dallas," said Dr. Jeffrey Janis, chief of plastic surgery at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and an associate professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. "He has amazing strength, mental fortitude and deep faith."

As remarkable as the groundbreaking face transplant is, the real story lies with Wiens himself.

"For me, he's been an inspiration," Janis said. "He is a true testament to the human spirit."

Wiens' family knew from the start how bleak the outlook was. It was Nov. 13, 2008. Wiens had been painting a Fort Worth church when the cherry picker he was riding in brushed against a high-voltage electrical wire.

He was rushed by helicopter to Parkland, where doctors told the family that if he survived he would be paralyzed. This was in addition to the burns that had left him without any facial features.

Wiens spent three months in a therapeutic coma while his family took turns sitting by his bed. Then one day, while clasping his hand, Sue Peterson unconsciously pushed her grandson's thumb down. He pushed back.