![]() ![]() “I block it out and do what I need to do. “It’s very hard if everyone in the facility isn’t on your side and they’re not making it easy for you,” she said. She senses that they’re afraid of her, or put off by her desire to be independent. It’s difficult, Nash said, because she feels the staff and other residents, many of them elderly, haven’t embraced her. Once an active woman who worked a series of jobs over the years to raise a daughter on her own, Nash now spends her days listening to audio books and walking the hallways of the nursing facility where she lives, using a cane for support. She is working with an advocate in Missouri - the state where the chimp who attacked her came from - preparing to release a video she recorded yesterday to encourage stronger laws restricting exotic animals to secure facilities. Her purpose in life now is to make sure others don’t suffer as she has. I don’t know what my future is, that’s the scary part.” “Sometimes you want to cry, you want out, you want some kind of home. As independent a woman as I was, it’s very hard to live. She hopes someday she can live at home instead of in a facility. She is hoping to get new hands - a previous hand transplant attempt failed - to gain a little more independence. Nash’s hands were also badly mangled in the attack, leaving her with only her right thumb, and a stump below her left elbow. I’m starting to get back into eating salads again. I can chew chicken, it’s a little softer. In 2009, there was a story that made national news when a TV actor chimpanzee named Travis attacked his owner’s friend when she mistakenly grabbed his Tickle Me Elmo doll. It’s still a little bit of work eating,” she said.Īs for her diet, she said, “I can’t chew steak. “They just made some bottom teeth for me recently. Her cheeks and lips move naturally as she speaks, and her speech is clear. The face otherwise looks as if it were her own. ![]() The lack of her own natural eyes is the most striking sign that something is amiss. To someone meeting her for the first time, the slight difference in skin tone where the donor face meets her neck is apparent. Nash no longer has much pain from the attack, but she is still adjusting to her new face and glass eyes. In 2011, Nash was the third person to get a full face transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She said she has largely made peace with what happened, but she remains frustrated by the severe limitations of her new life. Nash doesn’t remember the terrifying episode that almost claimed her life - when an aging chimpanzee kept by a friend in Stamford, Conn., attacked her in 2009. … I could change my own truck tire, and now I can’t even feed myself.” “Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot I can do,” Nash, 60, told the Herald before a checkup at Brigham and Women’s Hospital yesterday. Blind and still missing her hands, Nash lives quietly in a Massachusetts nursing home, trying to regain the other thing she lost in that brutal attack - her independence. Today, the media spotlight, the Oprah appearance, the flood of mail are all over. The attack lasted 12 minutes, which must have felt like an eternity.Charla Nash was national news four years ago after a friend’s chimpanzee mauled her so badly she needed a new face. Nash’s injuries were so serious that an officer presumably couldn’t tell her gender. “Hey listen,” one officer said over the radio, “We’ve got to get this out of here. He’s got no face.” “It just opened up one of the patrol cars and we had to let a couple go,” an officer said into a radio.Īt that point, Travis went running back through the house. Some officers gave chase while others tended to the victim. Officers remained in their vehicles at first. Herold did the same.īut at some point, Travis the chimp tried to get into a squad car. Charla Nash, the Connecticut woman who received a face transplant after a horrific attack by a friend’s pet chimpanzee, had a minor setback last week when her body began to reject the. ![]() Then came this over the crackle of the radio: “Person down, chimp outside.” When police arrived, she continued shouting to them to “shoot him!”. “Shoot him,” Herold kept shouting into the phone. “Tell them to shoot him. Tell them to shoot him. Tell them to shoot him.” Nash was not dead, but was severely disfigured. Wednesday, she remained in critical condition at a local hospital. “Bring the guns. You have to kill this chimp.”.Herold is at times frantic, at times sobbing. Travis could be heard squealing in the background. “They got to shoot him because I tried stabbing him and it didn’t work. They gotta shoot him,” she said. In that graphic 911 call, Herold, the primate’s owner, implored police to shoot the animal as it was attacking her friend, Charla Nash, 55. Herold had asked Nash to come over to help calm the chimp when he started acting up. “He looked at me like, ‘Mom, what did you do?’ I tried to pull him but he was to strong, so I called 911 and told them to get up here as fast as possible.” ![]()
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