MIAMI – Robert Chelsea is from California.
He is in Miami this week as part of a documentary about transplants, saying that his life’s work is to advocate for the disabled, burn victim survivors, and transplant patients.
Chelsea still remembers the 2013 day a drunk driver slammed into his car, which was disabled on the side of a Los Angeles-area roadway after overheating.
“The impact caused my car to go into the air and then back down, when seconds later it exploded,” Chelsea said.
He said the drunk driver, who was not hurt, hit him with such impact on the shoulder of the road that his car exploded on impact.
“I was sitting in the driver seat,” he said. “It looked like a long tunnel of fire.”
There was a wall of flames that caused him to suffer burns on upwards of 60% of his body and face.
“When (a Good Samaritan) was trying to help me, he said he tried to pull me out by my arms, but my arms were melting, so he used my belt buckle,” Chelsea said.
Waking six months later from a coma, Chelsea said skin from a cadaver was used to remold his hands, though several of his fingers had to be amputated.
“When you are a burn victim, you look like a Halloween mask,” he said.
Then in 2019, the now-73-year-old became the first African-American — and the oldest person — to undergo a full face transplant.
Chelsea showed Local 10 News’ Christina Vazquez the line along his head, which demarcates where the donor’s face was — as he states — stitched onto his.
“I have another forehead over mine, I have another set of cheeks, another nose, another chin, another set of lips, all of that has its own characteristics,” he said. “Every day I look in the mirror, I see another person. I don’t see myself. I feel like myself, but I don’t see myself. My cheeks and my skin are loose, the texture of my face makes me feel like an old cabbage patch doll. It is like that texture of a doll. It is a little loose because, of course, you can’t sew together perfect every single bit.”
He explained how being the first Black patient brought novel challenges, such as being able to recognize early external warning signs of rejection.
“Being the first is unique in many ways because you don’t have, even the surgeons don’t have, a clue how to detect any external signals of rejection when it comes to a person of color,” he said. “The New England Journal of Medicine and places like that, they had written some of the signs to look for are pale face or pink face or red face, blue lips, or white knuckles. That doesn’t apply to anybody of color so they had no idea what to look for.”
It is in his journey that Chelsea finds a purpose in being a full face transplant pioneer.
“Hopefully some kind of vehicle that will assist in remedying some of those challenges,” he said. “Now I can advocate for it. If the saying goes, ‘one size doesn’t fit all,’ well neither should one color, or culture, be a benchmark for everybody.”
Chelsea said he has also become an advocate for people with disabilities and for organ donation.
Photos before the crash, after the crash and after the facial surgery can be seen below:
RELATED LINKS
https://www.robertchelsea.org/
https://www.brighamandwomens.org/about-bwh/newsroom/face-transplant-chelsea
Editors note: Video used from the hospital is courtesy of Brigham and Women’s Hospital