Blinded Chimp Attack Victim Charla Nash: ‘I Wouldn’t Mind Seeing What I Look Like’
Feb. 28 2012, Published 10:00 a.m. ET
By Debbie Emery - Breaking Celebrity News Reporter
Three years after she was viciously mauled by a friend’s pet chimpanzee in a near-fatal attack that left her face hideously disfigured and took both her hands, Charla Nash is still learning to live with her extensive injuries.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing what I look like,” 58-year-old Nash, who was left blind after the attack, told WABC news.
As Breaking Celebrity News previously reported, the Stamford, Connecticut woman underwent a 20-hour reconstructive face transplant at a Boston hospital in May 2011, and talked about her long road to recovery for the British documentary called Extraordinary People last October.
The mammoth surgery was performed by a team of 30 doctors and nurses at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. An attempt to give her a new pair of hands sadly failed and the transplanted hands were subsequently removed, and Nash is still recovering from the face transplant nine months later.
In her rare interview this week, Charla revealed disturbing details of the attack at the hands of a 200 pound primate named Travis that left her scarred at such deep levels.
"I always thought that Travis was going to hurt someone someday but I never thought it would be me," she said, reported ABCNews.com.
“He ripped a whole hunk of hair in the back of my head and I was crying,” revealed Nash, explaining that her friend, Sandra Herold, who died in 2010, thought of the chimp like her own child.
“He ate better than you and I eat, and most people. He had a lot of takeout food from restaurants and he loved wine. And she used to give him a glass of wine every night.”
Travis the chimp also allegedly slept in the same bed as Herold. Nash was helping her friend lure Travis inside when the animal attacked, ripping off her nose, lips, eyelids and hands before being shot and killed by police.
Authorities were reportedly well aware of the da