Soldiers are trained to throw themselves in harm’s way if it means saving someone else, no matter how dangerous the situation may be. So when soldier Mitch Hunter was in a tragic car accident back in 2011 where his car slammed into a 10,000-volt electrical pylon, he didn’t hesitate to push a friend out of the way of a fallen electrical line.
The driver’s girlfriend immediately jumped out of the car after the collision, but Hunter, who was 21 at the time, managed to push her out of the way just after an electrical line fell on her. For five long minutes, 10,000 volts of electricity pumped through his body, and out of his hand and face. “People tell me that I’m fortunate that I don’t remember [the accident] because it would probably cause a lot of pain,” Hunter said of the accident, which took his leg and face.
Hunter tried to move on from the accident and accept how things were as doctors tried to patch up his face with skin-graft surgeries, but after his girlfriend Katerina got pregnant, he refused to have his own child be afraid of his face. “Imagine walking into a room and like falling, and everybody noticing,” Hunter said. “That’s how it was every time I walked in a room because of the way my face looked.”
Hunter decided to try an extremely risky and complicated 14-hour procedure that had only been successfully performed 10 times in the world, which would remove the leftover and scarred skin on his face, and transplant it with the face from a donor.
Five years after the face transplant surgery, the now 35-year-old is sharing his incredible progress, which now lets him go out in public with his son without all the anxiety he used to have. “I feel just as healthy just as I did when I was 21, and I feel great,” he said. “I mean, yeah, I’d like to have my leg and my face back, but without that happening I wouldn’t be who I am today.”
“Hot, cold, pain, tickle, rubbing my beard, someone kissing my face — I can feel everything. I think it’s an amazing journey. I mean, it’s been a hard journey,” he said.
Watch the entire video below to see the incredible progress Hunter has made since the tragic accident years ago.
Can you believe how positive Hunter is about everything he’s gone through? Let us know what you think in the comments below, and please SHARE this with friends on Facebook.
[Featured image credit: Facebook/Mitch Hunter]
Soldier Who Lost His Face Saving Girlfriend Is Healing 5 Years After Face Transplant is an article from: LifeDaily