Credit: SWNS
'Beyond my skin, nothing’s changed – but gaining my independence back is everything'
The first person to ever have a successful face and double hand transplant has found love five years on - and revealed his new donor face is TWICE his age.
Joe DiMeo, 24, suffered third degree burns to 80% of his body and had his fingertips amputated after his Dodge Challenger crashed and burst into flames in July 2018.
He underwent 20 reconstructive plastic surgeries and skin grafts before spending 23 hours in August 2020 having the pioneering surgery.
He's now revealed details about his face donor for the first time - a 48-year-old male stroke victim.
'Beyond my skin, nothing’s changed – but gaining my independence back is everything'
The first person to ever have a successful face and double hand transplant has found love five years on - and revealed his new donor face is TWICE his age.
Joe DiMeo, 24, suffered third degree burns to 80% of his body and had his fingertips amputated after his Dodge Challenger crashed and burst into flames in July 2018.
He underwent 20 reconstructive plastic surgeries and skin grafts before spending 23 hours in August 2020 having the pioneering surgery.
He's now revealed details about his face donor for the first time - a 48-year-old male stroke victim.
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🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00So I was 80% burnt.
00:02When I got the accident, I lost a lot of friends.
00:05Fake friends.
00:06I mean, I could do like a pity party, but that's just not me.
00:09I'm Joseph DeMeo. I'm 24 years old, and I'm from New Jersey.
00:13I'm the first successful face into the hand transplant in the world.
00:16When I was 18 years old, I moved out of my parents' house
00:19and got my own apartment for myself.
00:21I had my own car.
00:22It was a Dodge Challenger RT.
00:25I did a lot of mods to it.
00:26I don't remember the accident completely.
00:28I just went off what people told me.
00:29The year was 2018, July 13th, I think.
00:34So I went to work that night.
00:35It was overtime, so I wasn't supposed to be there,
00:37but I wanted extra money.
00:39Did the whole job, and then that morning,
00:42I just clocked out, was driving back home.
00:44I fell asleep at the wheel, and my car veered off the side of the road,
00:47hit a curb, flipped a couple times.
00:50I had long tube headers on the car, which is a mod
00:52to make it louder and stuff like that.
00:54So that scraped the curb, which created a spark,
00:57and the oil pan cracked at impact,
00:59and the sparks and oils just created a flame.
01:04So I was 80% burnt.
01:05I was in a coma for three and a half months.
01:08I guess my body went into shock,
01:10and they had to put me in a medically-induced coma
01:13so they could do all the skin graft surgeries.
01:16They had to amputate my fingertips,
01:18and then my lids were burnt, so they had to suture them.
01:22So I was looking out like a chain-link fence.
01:24When I woke up from the coma,
01:25the first thing I asked my mom, because she was there,
01:27I was the rims of my car.
01:29I knew there was an accident, but I didn't know the severity of it.
01:33The therapist came in, like occupational therapy and physical therapy,
01:36and she told me, yeah, your fingers have to be cut off
01:39and basically you can't move your fingers no more.
01:42And I was pretty sad about that.
01:44I can't work now with my burnt hands.
01:47She had this whole subject and talked about how we're going to get back to,
01:50you know, see if I can do stuff again, you know, just to help me do that.
01:54Yeah, so from that, it took about four months.
01:57After the hospital, I went to a rehab facility
02:01for more physical therapy to get back on my feet.
02:04And then I had to go to a plastic surgeon
02:07for the face and the hand transplant.
02:09So the donor was 48 years old.
02:11I actually had a stroke.
02:13After the surgery, I was like at a 0%.
02:15For the first couple weeks,
02:17I wasn't physically able to even move my fingers.
02:20They would have to move it for me.
02:22Now I'm at like a, I'd say 50%.
02:25I can cook, clean, do laundry.
02:28I can drive again. That was a big thing.
02:31When I got the accident, I lost a lot of friends, fake friends.
02:35It's sad at first, but then, like, you realize
02:38who your real friends are and you appreciate them more.
02:41So then all I had was my real friends, and they always supported me.
02:45People look at me, which don't bother me.
02:48I don't mind it, you know, because, like, I'm a curious person myself.
02:51Like, I don't mind people staring, because I would stare too.
02:54I created my TikTok about a year ago
02:57just to show my experience and my life journey.
03:01I was just doing it just to do it,
03:03and then, like, someone DMed me about it,
03:05saying, oh, like, you know, you stopped me from committing suicide.
03:08I think that suicide one really, like, pushed me to do more about it.
03:12A couple burn people hit me up about how do I do it.
03:16I just tell them just keep acting how you always acted.
03:19I mean, I could do, like, a pity part, but that's just not me.