Dallas Wiens, first US full-face transplant patient, gets married

The first person to receive a full-face transplant in the United States, Dallas Wiens, has married a woman he met at a support group for burn victims in Fort Worth, Texas.

Wiens wed Jamie Nash of Garland on Saturday at Ridglea Baptist Church in Fort Worth, the site of the accident that injured his face, the Dallas Morning News reported.

In Nov. 2008, Wiens bumped into a high-voltage power line while repairing a window at the church. In a 15-hour operation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, doctors attached a new face from an anonymous donor, the Boston Globe reported. It was the first face transplant in the world in which the recipient's immune system did not reject donor tissue.

Wiens can now feel most his face, eat, drink, smell and smile, the Boston Globe reported. “The minute details are incredible to me,’’ he said in April 2012, according to the Boston Globe. “The way my face has thrived has taken me off guard.’’

Nash was burned over 70 percent of her body in a car crash in June 2010, according to the Dallas Morning News.

“This is a giant step for him being independent,” Sue Peterson, Wiens step-grandmother, told the Dallas Morning News. “He’s marrying someone who can share about their pain that they’ve gone through, and their recoveries. They have fantastic attitudes about why they’re where they are.”

The couple sold exclusive interviews about their wedding to People magazine and allowed the ceremony to be filmed for a documentary television series about people who’ve overcome extreme challenges that’s in development, the Dallas Morning News reported.

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