Medical Miracle: Daughter of Donor embraces Face Transplant recipient

When Marinda ­Righter met ­Carmen Blandin Tarleton Tuesday, she rushed to embrace the woman whose transplanted face was donated by Righter's late mother, and did not soon let go. 

It was a magical moment, Righter said. In some strange but powerful way, it was as if she were holding her mother. 

“I get to feel my mother's skin again,” she said Wednesday at a press conference at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where Tarleton received her transplant. “I get to see her freckles. 

“Through you,” she said, turning to Tarleton, “I get to see my mother live on. This is truly a blessing.” 

Six years after her face was burned beyond recognition when her estranged husband doused her with industrial strength lye, Tarleton presented her new visage to the world, calling her transplant “heaven-sent.”

With a sunflower from Righter pinned to her shirt, the Vermont mother of two spoke movingly of her painstaking recovery, of the challenges she met with “knees knocking,” and of how the February transplant had helped her move forward with a renewed sense of possibility. 

“I am forever grateful,” said Tarleton, 44. “Although I went through what some may call hell, I found my way to my own happiness.”

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