A Connecticut woman who was attacked by a 200-pound chimpanzee revealed her horribly disfigured face to a national TV audience today after talk queen Oprah Winfrey lifted the veil off her face.
Charla Nash, 56, told Oprah she usually walks around the Cleveland Clinic with her hat and veil so she doesn’t frighten any hospital visitors.
CLICK HERE FOR IMAGE OF NASH (WARNING, GRAPHIC)
“So I don’t scare people … so I figure maybe it’s easier if I just walk around covered up,” Nash said.
The woman was attacked by a chimp, owned by her friend in Stamford, Conn., on Feb. 16.
She has no memory of the attack — and doesn’t want to have any.
“They have medicine that will help me with that,” she said. “I don’t want to [remember]… I want to get healthy. I don’t want to get wake up with nightmares.”
Nash lost her nose, hands, an eye lid and lips during the mauling.
Surgeons had to remove her eyes in April due to an infection.
Oprah’s interview with Nash was taped yesterday and began with Winfrey conversing with the victim through her veil.
Minutes into the chat, Winfrey asked if she could remove the covers — and the famed TV host nonchalantly got out of her chair and took Nash’s hat and veil off.
TV viewers were met with the jarring image of Nash — bandages over her scalp, no eyes, a bloody scar where her left eye used to be and a chunk of skin, transplanted from her thigh, in the middle of her face where her nose and mouth would be.
Underneath that hunk of flesh is a hole where her surgically built tongue is, allowing Nash to softly speak.
Her interview was subtitled.
Nash insisted she feels no bitterness toward the horrific fortune that fate’s dealt her.
“No I don’t ever think about it and there’s no time for that, anyway,” she said, “because I need to heal, not look backward.”
At the show’s conclusion, Oprah embraced Nash and grabbed the victim’s right thumb — the only finger she has left from the chimp attack.
“It is really shocking,” Oprah told her Chicago audience of Nash’s horribly disfigured face.
“But after sitting with her, you feel the power of her humanity.”
Police shot and killed the animal. Nash has been hospitalized since. She remains in stable condition at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
Winfrey praised Nash for having the courage to show her face.
“Charla, thank you for sharing your story with us and showing your face to the world on your own terms,” Oprah said.