Patient calls face transplant 'a chance to start fresh'

By Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff

James Maki, the nation's second face transplant recipient, said today that he hopes his story will encourage more families to donate the organs of their loved ones.

"My life has been a journey with many ups and downs. I hope this will be a chance to start fresh,'' he said during a brief press conference at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Maki, 59, was disfigured in June 2005, when he fell onto the electrified third rail in the Ruggles subway station. His face and right arm were badly burned. He told the Globe in interviews earlier this week that since then he had endured ridicule and stares whenever he ventured outside.

When Maki saw his new face for the first time four days after the April 9 transplant, he recalls telling his lead surgeon, Dr. Bohdan Pomahac: "I can't believe you made me look so close to what I used to look like."

Maki's voice cracked at times today. And when Susan Whitman, the widow of Maki's donor, spoke about the patients waiting for various types of transplants, Maki wiped tears from his eyes. The donor, Joseph Helfgot of Brookline, died after a heart transplant.

"I am elated that someone else can get a chance,'' Whitman told reporters. "It goes a long way to taking the sting out of'' her husband's death.