14 Years Ago, Fireman Had His Face Burned Off. Wait Until You See What He Looks Like Today!

In September 2001, firefighter Patrick Hardison and three other firefighters entered a burning house when the ceiling collapsed

My mask was melting to my face. My hose was already melted.”
Hardison pulled his mask off, held his breath and closed his eyes, and tried his best to escape the blazing inferno. Miraculously, Hardison made it out alive, but suffered horrible burns to his entire body, primarily his face.One of Hardison’s friends, Bricky Cole, tells ABC News,“There was nothing left of his face to tell you who he was.”He spent the next 63 days in a hospital, but he had lost his ears, lips, most of his nose, and nearly all of his eyelid tissue…

My kids were scared of me. You can’t blame them. They’re young kids.”
Living without a face  made Hardison depressed, he says that random children often “ran screaming and crying when they saw me. There are things worse than dying.”For the past 14 years, Hardison has had a total of 71 operations. Because of the stress, he and his wife eventually divorced.
A friend of Hardison wrote to Dr. Rodriguez, who had performed a face transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center in 2012, about Hardison’s story to see if there was a way to help Hardison.Dr. Rodriguez agreed, and they began looking for a match for a face transplant. They needed someone with the right skin color, hair color, blood type, and most importantly skeletal structure.One year later, a match was finally found. Former BMX rider, David Rodebaugh, was pronounced brain dead during a biking accident, and his mother agreed to donate his organs to Harrison – But he had a 50/50 chance of survival

In total, the surgery took 26 hours to complete, and Hardison’s recovery took several months.