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1 noted transplant recipient to offer comfort to another

ROCHEFORT-SUR-MER, France - Six years into a new life with transplanted hands, Denis Chatelier is uniquely placed to give advice to another groundbreaking French transplant patient, a woman learning to live with a new face.

Next week, 39-year-old Chatelier - the world's first double hand-transplant patient - will meet the woman who had the first partial face transplant Nov. 27.

"I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychoanalyst," Chatelier told the Associated Press ahead of his meeting with the 38-year-old French woman who, because of privacy laws, is identified in France only as Isabelle. "But what I want to do is show her that later in life, she can be happy."

Today, the father of five says his hands function at 80 percent. His life is nearly back to normal.

It has been a long, tough path.

Potent antirejection drugs initially left Chatelier shaky, sweaty, dizzy and suffering from frequent stomach flu. Like all transplant patients, he must take the drugs for life.

Chatelier, whose forearms were severed in 1996 by an exploding model rocket, underwent 17 hours of transplant surgery in January 2000. Afterward, he felt enormous stress from seeing himself everywhere in the media.

Chatelier once wore metal protheses and was taunted with nicknames like "Robocop." After the surgery, some people shook his hand and remarked, "That's not your hand, that's the hand of a dead man."

He learned to tune them out.

"You can't worry about how other people look at you," Chatelier told the AP. "It's not other people who heal us, it's ourselves."

Chatelier says the first thing he will do is congratulate the woman for her bravery.

"I am so happy for her, you can't imagine it," he said. "I find it beautiful. ... I have heard that she is satisfied when she looks in a mirror. That is already a big step."

[Last modified December 17, 2005, 01:02:06]