Charla Nash was national news four years ago after a friend’s chimpanzee mauled her so badly she needed a new face.
Today, the media spotlight, the Oprah appearance, the flood of mail are all over. Blind and still missing her hands, Nash lives quietly in a Massachusetts nursing home, trying to regain the other thing she lost in that brutal attack — her independence.
“Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot I can do,” Nash, 60, told the Herald before a checkup at Brigham and Women’s Hospital yesterday. “I’ve lost so much independence. … I could change my own truck tire, and now I can’t even feed myself.”
Nash doesn’t remember the terrifying episode that almost claimed her life — when an aging chimpanzee kept by a friend in Stamford, Conn., attacked her in 2009. She said she has largely made peace with what happened, but she remains frustrated by the severe limitations of her new life.
In 2011, Nash was the third person to get a full face transplant at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Nash no longer has much pain from the attack, but she is still adjusting to her new face and glass eyes. To someone meeting her for the first time, the slight difference in skin tone where the donor face meets her neck is apparent. The lack of her own natural eyes is the most striking sign that something is amiss. The face otherwise looks as if it were her own. Her cheeks and lips move naturally as she speaks, and her speech is clear.
But some facial expressions that people take for granted are a challenge for her. She practices raising her eyelids, pursing her lips and smiling.
“I make fish faces with my mouth, I smile,” she said.
“See, I’m smiling now,” Nash said.
“They just made some bottom teeth for me recently. I’m not used to them yet. It’s still a little bit of work eating,” she said.
As for her diet, she said, “I can’t chew steak. I can chew chicken, it’s a little softer. I can chew pizza. The crust is hard, but the pizza is OK. I’m starting to get back into eating salads again. That was my favorite, salads.”
Nash’s hands were also badly mangled in the attack, leaving her with only her right thumb, and a stump below her left elbow. She is hoping to get new hands — a previous hand transplant attempt failed — to gain a little more independence. She hopes someday she can live at home instead of in a facility.
“It’s a big disappointment for me. As independent a woman as I was, it’s very hard to live. Not even live — half-live,” Nash said. “Sometimes you want to cry, you want out, you want some kind of home. I don’t know what my future is, that’s the scary part.”
Her purpose in life now is to make sure others don’t suffer as she has. She is working with an advocate in Missouri — the state where the chimp who attacked her came from — preparing to release a video she recorded yesterday to encourage stronger laws restricting exotic animals to secure facilities.
Once an active woman who worked a series of jobs over the years to raise a daughter on her own, Nash now spends her days listening to audio books and walking the hallways of the nursing facility where she lives, using a cane for support.
It’s difficult, Nash said, because she feels the staff and other residents, many of them elderly, haven’t embraced her. She senses that they’re afraid of her, or put off by her desire to be independent.
“It’s very hard if everyone in the facility isn’t on your side and they’re not making it easy for you,” she said. “I block it out and do what I need to do. That’s what carries me on. I’ve never been a quitter.”
