Brenda Charett Jensen has been incapable of speaking for eleven years because of having her airway permanently damaged by a breathing tube during surgery. On Thursday, though, she was finally given the chance to speak without the assistance of a machine. Doctors from the University of California Davis Medical Center allowed her to become the second person in the United States to receive a larynx transplant. In addition to the larynx, she also received a donor's thyroid and a portion of a trachea. For the rest of her life, Jensen will have to take medication that will suppress her immune system. Also, her voice is not the one she had before her surgery in 1999, but that of the donor whose organs were used in the transplant. There are still issues with such procedures as this, mostly because the larynx is not thought of as a necessary organ because it is possible to live without it. Many ethical, financial, and insurance issues are grouped with transplants such as this.
I think it is pretty remarkable that transplants such as this are able to take place, and Jensen is incredible lucky not only because she is able to speak again, but because she is only the second person in the country to receive a larynx transplant. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to not be able to speak...especially for 11 years! It is progress like this that makes me marvel at the incredible feats that the medical field is able to accomplish. Hopefully kinks, such as financial and insurance issues, will be able to get smoothed out and make it more acceptable for events like this to take place for the people who long for something they are missing.
Source: CNN - "Voice found: Woman speaks with new larynx"
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