Jérôme Hamon, the first patient in the world to benefit from a total face transplant, died at the age of 49. Our journalist, Anne Jouan, pays tribute to an extraordinary man.
Jérôme Hamon was a funny man and that’s what I will remember regarding him. He had the fine and caustic humor of those who have suffered a lot but whose great elegance is not to show it too much, so as not to flaunt it. True pain cannot be shared. He died on Tuesday at his home in Brittany. He was 49 years old.
Three successive transplants
In 2010, he was the first patient in the world to benefit from a total face transplant. He suffers from a rare genetic disease, neurofibromatosis, which causes malformations, particularly of the face, and Professor Lantiéri, then at the Henri Mondor hospital (Créteil), carried out this procedure. The surgeon remembers, in the recovery room, the expression of Jérôme’s mother at his brand new appearance. She comes to see him and has this magnificent sentence: “I recognize him, it’s him, my son!” » But following this rebirth, in 2018, rejection of the graft, he had to be operated on once more, this time at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital in Paris. New face, once more. The third. The graft will last six years.
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From left. to the right. : Priscilla Dray, Professor Emmanuel Hirsch, professor of medical ethics at the University of Paris-Saclay, Professor Lantieri, surgeon and director of the reconstructive and aesthetic surgery department at the Georges-Pompidou hospital, Pascal Coler, Jérôme Hamon, Laura Nataf , © Alvaro Canovas/Paris Match
In June 2019, for the 70th anniversary issue of Paris Match, we brought together four transplant recipients: Priscilla, Laura, Pascal and Jérôme. Asked regarding the way we live with a disability in the eyes of others, Jérôme had these words: “We tend to say: ‘They’re children, they don’t understand.’ I want to answer: “Yes, but do you think regarding how I feel when someone points at me, when people who pass me on the sidewalk turn around to stare at me once more?” Whether it’s a child, a mature person, it doesn’t matter! The pain is there and age is no excuse. Before my first transplant, in June 2010, the disease was constantly progressing. I lived withdrawn into myself. Every time I had to go out, I had a knot in my stomach. I wondered what I was going to get in terms of looks, insults, nicknames… They called me Quasimodo, Elephant Man. »
Stunned by such wickedness, he did not respond, “disarmed”.
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Professor Lantiéri is devastated by the death of his patient, “a true intellectual who, because of his appearance, was not able to do what someone of his intelligence might aspire to”. Jérôme, victim of bullying since childhood and whose dream was to study biology.
In recent years, following the second transplant, he wanted to be a bookseller. Jérôme loved the company of books. They don’t judge.
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