This is the emotional moment a tearful widow met the man who was donated her late husband’s face in a pioneering face transplant.
Lilly Ross met Andy Sandness at the Mayo Clinic a year after he received the face of her husband, Calen, to repair the damage caused by a failed suicide attempt a decade before.
Video shows the pair locked in an emotional embrace at the clinic where Andy underwent the 56-hour surgery that changed his life.
Lilly Ross was eight months pregnant when high-school sweetheart Calen killed himself shortly before the transplant took place and agreed to donate his organs.
She met Andy with her son, Leonard, feeling her late husband’s face and running her fingers through his beard remarking how similar the face felt.
The pair later looked at a photo album and she explained how she wants Andy to play a role in her son’s life, according to STV.
Andy revealed the remarkable transformation in February this yea r eight months after he received Calen’s face saying he felt normal after simply stepping into an elevator again and blending in with other people.
“It sank in that I’m finally normal again,” American Sandness he told the Mayo Clinic at the time. “It felt awesome.
“There are no words to express just how grateful I am for this gift.”
Andy said his life was quite restricted when he was severely injured by a gunshot wound, aged 21, in 2006.
“Now, I can go back and enjoy my life like I used to,” he told a documentary produced by the clinic.
“I was going through some rough times and, you know, I mean, I made the wrong choices.
“Got the gun out of the closet and I remember just cocking the chamber and looking down the barrel of the gun and said ‘(Beep) it,’ and pulled the trigger.”
His father, Reed, said of the transplant: “Oh, it’ll help him tremendously. Tremendously. It’s like getting a second chance in life.”
Lifelong family friend Larry Napolitano said: “You don’t even look at his face anymore, do you?
“Just look at the eyes. You look at that soul, you know, and he’s got a good one.”
The Wyoming man received the first-ever face transplant performed at the Mayo Clinic.
In the three years leading up to the surgery, dozens of medical specialists spent more than 50 Saturdays in a human anatomy lab refining their surgical techniques and developing their approach, the Mayo Clinic said.
