Though the patient’s prognosis was far from guaranteed, last spring’s face transplant performed by a Montreal medical team was a momentous event for Canadian medicine.
Since then, Maurice Desjardins’s life has been filled with obstacles, but he has managed to avoid the worst-case, which would have been his body rejecting the graft.
According to a story by Radio-Canada’s Découverte programme last year, Desjardins suffered facial disfigurement following a hunting accident in 2011. In addition to significant damage to the muscles, bones, and nerves in his face, he was left with only half of a face and constant discomfort.
How a Quebec guy became a Canadian medical miracle: The face of a stranger
Everything changed in the spring of last year when the high-risk treatment was carried out at Montreal’s Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital by surgeon Dr. Daniel Borsuk and his team. Desjardins’s face was successfully restored in its entirety with the jaw, teeth, nose, and cartilage of a donor.
Borsuk recently told Découverte, “I was in control during the graft, but afterwards, during the recovery time, I was no longer in control of anything,” he claimed that Desjardins has had a trying and trying year.
Desjardins still needs a feeding tube, so eating is just one of many things that he finds challenging. He needs everything to be crushed up before he can eat it. He has shed sixty-five pounds after the procedure.
Gaétane, his wife, is mostly responsible for his care. She drives Desjardins between their home in Notre-Dame-de-la-Sallette and checks in Montreal, which is two hours away, and assists in administering the approximately fifteen prescriptions he needs to take each day.
Maurice makes me feel at ease. I become stressed out when I’m not with him.
“I’m always afraid of making a mistake. There are so many different types of medication. I have to pay close attention to what I’m doing,” she told Découverte. “It’s really a 24/7 job.”
Gaétane gave up her job to care for her spouse full-time since it all became too much for her to handle. The couple suffered a financial loss as a result.
Borsuk said he was unaware that transplant recipients lacked financial assistance.
“I think that we have a great public [health care] system and I think it works really well, but the problem with some of these transplant patients is most of them don’t live near a transplant centre,” he stated.
“They have to leave their homes, get in their car, pay for parking, pay for gas, pay for medication, which aren’t always covered. And so it ends up being a quite expensive year for these patients.”