--- title: Face Transplant: A Fire Burn Victim Gets A New Face description: Here's how Patrick Hardison's life has changed one year after receiving the most extensive face transplant ever canonical: https://time.com/4463200/face-transplant-the-first-family-vacation/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-08-25T10:30:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-07T06:44:11.862Z article:section: Health og:title: What Life Looks Like After a Face Transplant og:description: Here's how Patrick Hardison's life has changed one year after receiving the most extensive face transplant ever og:url: https://time.com/4463200/face-transplant-the-first-family-vacation/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt34c907ee827006e2/6988a35aab6d7742ac6aafef/pat.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1920 og:image:height: 1080 og:image:alt: PAT og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: What Life Looks Like After a Face Transplant twitter:description: Here's how Patrick Hardison's life has changed one year after receiving the most extensive face transplant ever twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt34c907ee827006e2/6988a35aab6d7742ac6aafef/pat.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What Life Looks Like After the World's Most Extensive Face Transplant > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=6171fe6a-08ad-427e-b881-e3eaa2859706&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: What Life Looks Like After the World’s Most Extensive Face Transplant [Watch (HLS stream): What Life Looks Like After the World’s Most Extensive Face Transplant](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/nTUtylRO.m3u8) (3:20)  _Published 2016-08-24. Firefighter Patrick Hardison was severely injured in a house fire in 2001. In 2015, he became the recipient of the most extensive face transplant ever done. 10 months later, Patrick and his family take their first family vacation after the surgery._ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) and [Diane Tsai](https://time.com/author/diane-tsai/) Aug 25, 2016 10:30 AM UTC by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) and [Diane Tsai](https://time.com/author/diane-tsai/) Aug 25, 2016 10:30 AM UTC Fifteen years ago, Patrick Hardison, then a 27-year old volunteer firefighter in Senatobia, Miss., suffered a massive burn injury to his face when he ran into a burning house and the ceiling collapsed. He lost his ears, lips, eyelids and most of his nose. Hardison made history in 2015 when he became the recipient of the most extensive face transplant ever. His surgery is part of an innovative and controversial shift in the field of organ transplantation, documented in [the Sept. 5 issue of TIME](http://time.com/4465740/the-new-transplant-revolution/). People are now getting transplants of organs that may not save their lives, like a heart, but can dramatically improve them, like a new face. Before his face transplant, Hardison grew depressed, lost his tire-selling business, became addicted to painkillers and split with his wife of 10 years. He went under the knife 71 times to improve the look and function of his face, yet almost always hid behind a baseball cap and sunglasses. When his doctor told him that his lack of eyelids was destroying his sight, that was the last straw. “I hated life,” Hardison says. Last August, Hardison underwent a 26-hour surgery to replace his face with that of a 26-year-old bike mechanic who’d been killed in a cycling accident. Though there had been 37 face transplants since the first was performed in France in 2005, Hardison’s was by far the most extensive. Dr. Eduardo D. Rodriguez, head of the NYU Langone Medical Center face-transplant program, told Hardison he had only a 50% chance of surviving the procedure, since no one had successfully transplanted as much face and scalp tissue before.  Patrick Hardison has made significant progress. NYU Langone Medical Center “Everything in life has a risk,” Hardison tells TIME. “When it’s your time to go, you’ll go—whether you’re walking down the street and get hit by a car or you’re lying on the operating table.” A year after the surgery, Hardison says he’s doing great. Though he remains on potent drugs to prevent his body from rejecting his face, so far, that hasn’t happened. He’s happy with his new life and recently took his five children to Disney World, where he was able to swim with them for the first time since his face injury in 2001\. “I would’ve given up a long time ago if it wasn’t for them,” Hardison says of his kids. TIME accompanied Hardison and his family on part of their vacation. “It’s given me a new life,” he says in the video above. “It’s given me hope that I can walk down the street and not be stared at.” _You can read more about Hardison and the new transplant revolution in_ [_the Sept. 5 issue of TIME_](http://time.com/4465740/the-new-transplant-revolution/)_._ ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] The day of the accident, actually my grandmother came pick me up from school and took me swimming. I was scared, I was seven at the time. And you wake up one day and your dad looks one way, and then he goes to work and he looks another way. [ MUSIC ] [ UNKNOWN ] your shoes. We're gonna be there in just a second. [ CROSSTALK ] is going on Twitter. Put your black ones on. My name is [ UNKNOWN ] I'm a firefighter and [ UNKNOWN ] injured in a house fire in September 5th, 2001. It was so Such a drastic change that, no matter the age. I could have been 17 and still the same reaction. But, being the oldest of the children. [ UNKNOWN ] process I just try to stay strong for it all and just let them know that. It's going to be okay. I mean daddy doesn't look like the way he did but, when you hear him talk, or you look at his hand or look at his feet, he's still the same person that he was [ UNKNOWN ]. What kind of drivers do we get? I went through 14 years of 71 surgeries trying to fix everything that got burned off. My eye doctor had told me that I would lose my vision if I didn't get new eyelids, so we looked to see how we were gonna do that. And the only thing we could do was face transplant. Face that were burned in the fire. Then I found Dr Eduardo Rodriguez. I have to go through the testing process and get listed. And in August the 13th 2015 I got the call and surgery began. And August 14th for the face transplant. [ MUSIC ] [ INAUDIBLE ] Let's turn that around. Let's take a close look at it. Let me see you gauze. [ MUSIC ] [ INAUDIBLE ] We're given a trip to Walt Disney World and my kids and I hear this [ UNKNOWN ] enjoying the [ MUSIC ] Yep . >> He's still the same. He's still like a Sour Patch Kid. He can be sour, but then he's sweet and he makes jokes all the time, but he is like a caring person who would do anything for any of us just to make any of us happy. [ INAUDIBLE ] Let's get some [ UNKNOWN ]. It's given me a new life. It's given me hope that could walk down the street and not be stared at. [ MUSIC ] Like [ UNKNOWN ] go swimming now hadn't done in 15 years cuz I had a trach and all that stuff. And it's just everything felt different. I could see to drive now, things I couldn't do. It's just saved my life automatically. 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