Katie will live the rest of her life as an experiment in the longevity of transplanted faces. Medical advances come quickly, and even her doctors can't predict what her future holds. Siemionow, with $2.8 million in funding from the military, is researching an alternative to immunosuppressive drugs. She is hoping to find what many scientists call the holy grail -- a chimeric cell, part donor and part recipient, that will encourage the immune system to accept new tissue as its own and make antirejection drugs unnecessary.
凯蒂的余生都将以换脸移植手术病人的身份度过。但由于医疗技术进步越来越快，就连她的医生也无法预测其未来。西米奥诺从军方获得了280万美元资金支持，正在研究免疫抑制药物的替代品。她希望找到许多科学家所称的“圣杯”，即嵌合细胞，它部分是供体部分是受体，这将鼓励免疫系统接受新的组织壮大自己，使抗排斥药物变得不再重要。
Fourteen months after the transplant, Katie's doctors had completed the three major revision surgeries. They are also likely to slim her face, reduce scarring, and improve her eyelids. Papay said he's pleased with how Katie has adapted so far to her new face, and with the quality of her new skin. "I'm extremely happy that she has not had any rejections," he told me. "But I'm not happy with her orbits. We'd hoped she'd have better vision. And aesthetically we could do better on how her eyes are positioned."
移植手术14个月后，凯蒂的医生们完成了三次主要的整形手术。它们还可能使她的脸变瘦，减少疤痕，改善她的眼睑。帕佩伊说，他很高兴凯蒂已经适应了她的新面孔，也很满意她新皮肤的质量。他表示：“我非常高兴她没有任何排斥反应，但我不满意她的恢复情况。我们希望她有更好的视力。从美学角度来说，我们可以更好地了解她的眼睛位置。”
Gastman agreed with Papay. "We all like her nose; her lips are pretty," he told me. "There are things we know are going to get better when we fix them, like the jaw reduction. But some things we can only do so much to improve upon. Her injury may have been the worst injury of any face transplant injury ever. We can't necessarily make all of her muscles move again. Her tongue is not working well because she lost a lot of tongue muscle and nerves."
加斯特曼也同意帕佩伊的观点，他说：“我们都喜欢她的鼻子，她的嘴唇很漂亮。当我们修复它们的时候，我们知道有些东西会变得更好，比如下巴缩小。但有些事情我们只能竭尽所能来改进。她的伤势可能是所有面部移植者中最严重的。我们不能让她所有的肌肉再次恢复运动。她的舌头不太好用，因为她失去了很多舌头肌肉和神经。”
Katie intends to pick up where she left off, starting with college, online at first, and then maybe a career in counseling. "So many people have helped me; now I want to help other people," she said. She hopes to speak to teenagers about suicide and the value of life. For now, she's focused on her recovery. "I'm not on the other side," she said recently to her mother. "Oh, baby," Alesia replied. "Your story is not over yet."
凯蒂打算继续她之前的生活，从上大学开始，首先在网上学习，然后可能从事咨询工作。她说：“很多人帮助了我，现在我想帮助其他人。”她希望和青少年谈论自杀和生命价值等话题。目前，她专注于恢复健康。她最近对母亲说：“我终于走了过来！”阿莱西亚回复称：“哦，宝贝，你的故事还没有结束。”
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