Remarkable Recovery: Face Transplant Restores Life to Burn Survivor

Joseph DiMeo vividly recalls that fateful moment when he settled into his car, turned on the radio, and tried to shake off the drowsiness that clung to him.

In 2018, the then 18-year-old from New Jersey had just completed a grueling night shift at a food testing laboratory. Running on little more than fumes and a scant five hours of sleep, he had spent the earlier part of the day golfing with his father. Now, he was eagerly anticipating the short, 10-minute drive home, where a good night’s rest awaited him.

However, DiMeo did not awaken in the comfort of his own bed. Instead, he found himself in a hospital room, a staggering three and a half months later, grappling with the devastating reality of having 80 percent of his skin severely burned.

The tragedy struck when DiMeo, overcome by fatigue, fell asleep at the wheel of his Dodge Challenger. The vehicle veered off course and collided with a telephone pole, igniting in flames with DiMeo trapped inside. In critical condition, he was rushed to the hospital and subsequently placed in a medically induced coma.

Doctors informed DiMeo and his family that survival itself was a near miracle, given the significant threat posed by fevers and infections. The skin, being the body’s largest organ, serves as a vital shield against bacteria, viruses, radiation, and dehydration.

Without it, the body is defenseless against hundreds of catastrophic threats. Survival alone was almost unthinkable.

‘It took me a while to really understand the damages to my body,’ DiMeo, now 27, told the Daily Mail. ‘But in the rehab side, that’s when I really realized, okay, I’m in trouble. This is a whole new life for me.’

While he was in a coma over those three months, going back and forth between dreams of walking his dog and screaming into an endless void, surgeons had performed 15 skin grafts on DiMeo’s face, hands, arms and chest. 

The grafts saved his life, but he was no longer recognizable due to the burns and intense scarring.  

Joseph Dimeo remembers getting into his car after a long shift with little sleep. The next thing he knew, he was waking up three months later in a hospital, with 80 percent of his skin burned off

DiMeo suffered catastrophic injuries that doctors estimated he would not survive. In 2020, he underwent the first successful face and double hand transplant. He is pictured at left before the accident, in the middle after waking up and at right following the transplant  

It wasn’t until DiMeo woke up three months after the accident that he was finally able to look in the mirror for the first time. 

His fingers were white and burned down to his knuckles. His eyelids had been completely burned off and skin had melted over his eyes, obscuring his vision like the bars of a jail cell. 

He had also lost about 60lbs of muscle he’d gained from years of intensive weightlifting and following a strict diet. Once benching 350lbs, now he could only walk about two feet at a time.

Staring in the reflection, DiMeo told the Daily Mail he saw not the self-sufficient ‘gym rat’ he’d always been, but a stranger resembling Freddy Krueger of Nightmare on Elm Street. 

It no longer felt like him in the mirror, but DiMeo was determined to recover as much of himself as possible. He credits his healthy lifestyle before the accident for not only his survival, but for being able to walk, talk and swallow food quicker than doctors anticipated.

‘Being focused on physical health and nutrients definitely helps,’ he said. ‘I’d always order a chicken leg for dinner or lunch at the hospital and I’d nibble on that, but then my parents would bring in the good stuff, the healthy stuff.’ 

For DiMeo, this would be chicken breast and a variety of colorful vegetables, which research suggests aids in muscle recovery. On a ‘splurge day,’ he’d opt for pizza or a Taylor ham, egg and cheese sandwich. 

‘It’s not fun, but it’s going to make you feel better,’ he said. 

As the months wore on, DiMeo moved back in with his parents and slowly started regaining his lost independence. He also underwent additional surgeries and rehabilitation. But in 2019, his plastic surgeons in New Jersey told him ‘there’s nothing more we can do for you.’ 

DiMeo had no more healthy skin left for grafting procedures.

DiMeo is pictured above in the hospital after his accident 

At left, DiMeo is seen before the accident. At right, he is wearing the same clothes but after waking up from the coma

‘That was a huge gut punch for like two seconds because [the doctor] then said, “Oh, I know a doctor in New York that does a face transplant,’ DiMeo explains. ‘And I said, “Well then let’s do it because I don’t want to be stuck like this forever.”‘

Because DiMeo’s eyelids had been burned off, his eyes were left constantly exposed. Eyelids are necessary for blinking, which lubricates the eyes with tears and shields them from debris. But without eyelids, the eye surface dries out. DiMeo was facing the possibility of permanent blindness, and with no fingertips, he would be unable to learn Braille. 

He agreed to the pioneering and risky surgery.  

Pictured above is the cover of DiMeo’s memoir

A few months later, in August 2020, 22-year-old DiMeo, with the help of more than 140 medical staff at NYU Langone, underwent the world’s first successful face and double hand transplant, which took 23 hours. 

As he awoke, DiMeo remembers ‘instant nerve pain like cat claws popping out’ of his hands and his eyes being swollen shut. His parents’ voices stood out amid a sea of nurses and doctors talking around him.

He was soon able to open his eyes and get his first look at his brand new face, which came from a 47-year-old deceased man in Rhode Island. 

‘I was super swollen, long hair. I looked like Ben Franklin, that’s how long my hair was,’ DiMeo said. ‘And then I was grateful for everything.

‘I was super grateful that it was a success. I could start a new life again.’

Much like his initial car crash recovery, DiMeo’s first taste of normalcy after the transplant came from food. Using his hands to hold a slice of pizza or a hamburger, he says, ‘was super exciting.’ 

‘It’s little things like that,’ he added. ‘[The food] is not healthy, but those are small goals that people do every day. It was a huge moment for me.’ 

DiMeo, pictured above at age 27, received his transplant from a 47-year-old man from Rhode Island. It was the first time a face and double hand transplant had been successful

DiMeo is still working on his mobility with his new hands, but he hopes to be back lifting weights with the help of custom wrist guards

DiMeo told the Daily Mail that while ‘it’s pretty cool’ to be part of such a major medical milestone, he acknowledges the price of progress. 

Two other simultaneous face and hand transplant attempts are known to have been performed – one in Paris in 2009 and another in Boston in 2011 – but each had an adverse outcome. The first patient died after complications from post-surgical infections, while the second had to have the transplanted hands removed due to failure to thrive.

Only about 50 partial or full face transplants have been performed to date worldwide, and about one in five of those patients died during the follow-up period. 

But DiMeo has used his experience to focus on advocacy, especially in his community. He speaks at his old high school, where students learn about him in history and health class. 

‘Hopefully they can take something from it and be inspired and say, “I’m not worried about the pimples on my face now or the clothes I wear,’ he said. 

‘It’s very painful in school, and hopefully they can take something from my story and apply it to their high school life.’  

Now, at 27, DiMeo is not only working toward getting back to who he was, but growing and forming new experiences. He met his wife, Jessica, in 2021, and the pair married in Hawaii in December 2024. DiMeo, once ‘kind of a homebody,’ has since traveled around the world with Jessica, most recently to Japan.

Jessica, who works as a nurse, helps DiMeo with tasks he’s still working on mastering like buttoning his shirts and opening jars, along with changing bandages and helping manage medications after surgery. 

DiMeo is seen above before the accident with his dog. He believes his recovery and resilience comes from learning to work hard in his youth

DiMeo and his wife, Jessica, are pictured at their wedding. The two have traveled to multiple countries together, which DiMeo says he never would have done until he met her

DiMeo is on about a dozen medications to prevent his body from rejecting the transplant and provide his body with electrolytes, which help manage fluid levels that diminish from transplants, along with supplements such as magnesium and folic acid. 

As for daily life, he hopes to get back to weightlifting using custom wrist guards his mother made. 

He has also written a memoir, Eighty Percent Gone, and started a foundation with the same name.  

DiMeo’s story is one of resilience, which he says dates back to his childhood. His father, John, instilled a strict worth ethic in him, and gave him two choices when he finished high school: ‘you go to college or you go to work.’ 

DiMeo chose work, and spent many days as a teenager keeping up with chores, mowing lawns and fixing things around the house.

It fueled his recovery, he says, but there are still days where the mental load of his ordeal takes over and he has his ‘sad days.’

DiMeo told the Daily Mail that closure about his accident may help with these feelings. He knows his car flipped multiple times and that he crashed into a telephone pole, causing the vehicle to erupt in flames. 

While there is police footage of the wreck, DiMeo has not seen it but thinks eventually getting to view it may bring some peace. ‘It’ll just be an interesting video to see. I wouldn’t be traumatized by it because I want to see, and those things don’t bother me,’ he said. 

As 100,000 Americans are on the national waiting list for an organ transplant, the majority of which are kidneys, DiMeo has a clear message to those considering donation. 

Now at 27, DiMeo (pictured above with his wife, Jessica) is working on getting back to daily life and has written a memoir about his experience

DiMeo is urging more Americans to consider donating their organs, especially as 100,000 people wait on transplant lists

‘Donate your organs,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to need them when you go. Anything internal is like, why not? You’re going to wear a suit or a dress in the casket, so why not just donate [your organs]?’

In DiMeo’s case, doctors were able to take a 3D printing of his donor’s face and hands so the family could still have an open casket without having to remove the areas immediately.  

He also wrote a letter to the family of his donor, whose identity was kept private. He hasn’t received a response from the family, though he knows it may be ‘very traumatic’ for the individual’s loved ones to see his face and hands on another person. 

Even with the new face and hands, his body is still healing from swelling and redness, which can attract stares out in public. DiMeo doesn’t mind, but he does see it as a teaching opportunity. 

‘Try staying in your own lane. Worry about yourself. Don’t really worry about what other people think of you,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘It’s easier said than done; it took me years. I was burned, everyone stared at me. The first person I saw [in the mirror] was Freddy Krueger, and that’s a scary movie. So imagine seeing that at the mall. 

‘I didn’t cover up or anything and hide. I just was open with it, and people stared. I probably would stare too, and I can’t get mad if I would do it too.’

He added: ‘Don’t let a five-second stare ruin your day because everyone’s going to stare at you no matter what, how you look and how you dress. You don’t know what they’re going through and if they’ve got problems in their life, so just stay in your lane, try to do better for yourself and your family.’