Rebekah Aversano was meeting Richard Norris for the first𒅌 time, but she had seen his face before — on her brother.
After Ave✃rsano’s brother, Joshua, was tragically killed in a car accident in 2012, their family made a decision that changed Norris’ life.
Norris, 39, had been horribly dis🐎figured 15 years earlier in a shotgun accident that blew away his lips, teeth, nose and much 🔜of his upper and lower jaws.
Norris had volunteered for a risky and groundbreak🔴ing transplant surgery.
Three years ago, Aversano’s family gave ꧟him Joshua’s face.
“Do you mind if I touch it?’’ Aversano🐎 said when they met at Norris’ Virginia home for the first time in a one-on-one recorded by “60 Minutes Australia.”
“No, not at all,” Norris said.
“Wow,’’ she said after stroking his new cheek. “This is the face 🅠I grew upও with.”
Until the Aversano family’s gift, Norris lived with the pain💜 of a horrible disfigurement and a string of facial surgeries that left him depressed and suicidal.
Then doctors offered him the life-restoring option of a face transplant 👍— but there was a catc🐟h.
Norris survived, but for the rest of his life he runs the risk of his body 🃏rejecting the new face.
But he says the gamble was worth it.
“I am now able to walk past peopl🔜e and no one even gives me a second look,’’ he saiﷺd.
The 36-hour transplant operation was considered the most extensive at the time beca🔴use it involved so much facial tissue.
It was the 23rd face transplant in history.
For the rest of his life, Norris must take a cocktail of anti-rejection drugs that will ♔weaken his immune system and leave him vulnerable to many health problems.
He also is not allowed to drink, smoke, get sunburned or risk injury, all of which will only increase the po𒁃ssibility of rejection.
Aversano said doc🌟tors warned her parents be꧃fore the meeting that they might not see their son in Norris’ face.
But they said they did.
“W💛e can definitely see our son in him,” Joshua’s ♓mother, Gwen, told Canada’s CTV News network.
“Some of the facial featꦆures would definitely be our son, so we could see similarities, very much so.
“We are just so pleased we have been able to help him. Even t𓄧hough we had such a tragic loss, we were able to give someone else the benefit of our son.”
