Charla Nash, 56, survived an attack by a 200-pound chimp that left her without eyes, a nose or mouth. The attack occurred on Feb. 16, 2008 when the chimp’s owner, Sandra Herold, asked Nash, her friend and employee, to help her lure the agitated chimp named Travis back inside the house.
Despite being blind and only able to eat through a straw, Charla Nash insisted she is not angry, saying: “I don’t even think about it. There’s no time for that anyways because I need to heal, you know, not look backwards.”
On The Oprah Winfrey Show, the talk show host removed Ms Nash’s hat and veil to reveal her face, which was swollen and damaged beyond recognition. She had a large scar near the bottom of her face and a large piece of skin where her nose had been.
The chimpanzee ripped off Ms Nash’s hands, nose, lips and eyelids and she has been in hospital since. She remains in stable condition at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
Ms Nash said she didn’t remember anything from the attack, and doesn’t want to.
“I want to get healthy,” she said. “I don’t want to wake up with nightmares.”
Charla, who permanently lives in a hospital in Cleveland, isn’t aware of the full extent of her injuries, as she won’t often feel her face and asks others not to describe them to her. She drinks all of her meals through a small hole where her mouth used to be, and while it seems impossible, Charla hopes for the day that she can have “a hot dog or piece of pizza.”
The doctor who treated Charla when she was first brought into the emergency room explains that paramedics on the scene said her hands looked like they had gone through meat grinders and that her fingers were thrown about the room. He goes on to say:
“The monkey had ripped off her entire upper jaw, had ripped off her nose, which as hanging by a thread. We found extensive dirt, chimp fur, and chimp teeth implanted in her bone.”
Though Charla can’t remember exactly what happened the morning she lost her face to this animal, the chilling 911 call from her friend, Herold, paints a devastating picture. The woman screams into the phone that the animal is “eating” her friend and begs the operator to send the police to shoot the chimp.
Now, as she spends her days about the hospital, her face veiled as to not “scare” other people, she relishes in the small moments she gets to spend with her 17-year-old daughter and hopes that one day, she might receive a face and hand transplant.
Incredibly sad!!!
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