The New Haven woman who was brutally mauled by a friend's chimpanzee last year is out of luck again—a hospital has told her it can't perform transplants on her badly disfigured face and hand. The injuries were sustained in March 2009 when Charla Nash's friend asked her to help get her perturbed pet chimp back into the house. The 200-pound animal, who went by Travis, then went berserk. He was shot by local police, but not before ripping off Nash's hand, nose, lips and eyelids leaving her permanently blind.
Nash—who is suing the primate's owner for $50 million—planned many surgeries including transplants at the Cleveland Clinic. But now the famed medical facility, which performed the first-ever face transplant in 2008, says it can't work on the chimp victim since the hand and face transplants would have to be done simultaneously and would have to come from the same donor. Her attorney Bill Monaco, told AP she is looking for alternative facilities since the operation would "significantly improve her quality of life." A face transplant would help her breathe, eat and smell, while a hand transplant would give her more independence.
