Man Who Obtained Historic Face Transplant Reveals How He Met Spouse (Unique)

Trying again, it was Joe DiMeo‘s confidence that first captivated Jessica once they began courting. It is in the way in which he walks, the way in which he clothes and his inviting dialog expertise. Joe’s confidence shines by way of every part he does, says 34-year-old Jessica.

That is nonetheless one in every of her favourite issues about Joe, 26, and she or he imagines it is simply how he is been his entire life, nicely earlier than they began courting in April 2021 and tied the knot this previous December.

“I imply, I did not know him earlier than, however I might solely assume that he was a really assured teenager and younger man,” Jessica tells PEOPLE whereas sitting beside Joe at their dwelling in New Jersey. “Now he is a really assured man.”

His sense of self survived the accident that threatened his life, however different components of his identification didn’t come out unscathed. Joe’s physique was 80 % burned after his automobile went up in flames, leaving virtually no pores and skin left to graft. In 2020, he grew to become the primary surviving recipient of a face and double hand transplant.

Joe’s world modified in drastically 2018, when he was 18 years outdated. He was driving dwelling at 7 a.m., simply after ending the night time shift at a lab the place he examined meals merchandise. He did not thoughts working so late; he was placing the additional money towards automobile components to repair up his Dodge Challenger.

Plus, Joe admits to PEOPLE, he did not actually care about sleep again then — 4 or 5 hours felt regular. He was solely 10 minutes away from his house when he crashed.

“I simply fell asleep on the wheel, and the automobile hit the aspect of the highway, hit a curb and caught on hearth,” Joe remembers. He was in a coma for 3 and a half months and awoke in a burn unit, the place he remained for 2 extra weeks. He left the hospital to spend a few months at a burn rehab, then he moved again into his mother and father’ dwelling.

“I used to be principally a 20-year-old child once more, which is not cool. My mother did my laundry, cooked, cleaned, all that stuff, and I simply laid on the sofa with my canine,” says Joe. “That simply wasn’t for me.”

Although dangerous, the transplant was Joe’s solely probability to regain independence. In 2019, he met Dr. Eduardo D. Rodriguez, who deemed Joe an excellent candidate for the operation. Forward of the process, he underwent about six months of testing led by Dr. Rodriguez and his crew at NYU Langone, although when COVID-19 hit, the transplant was postponed till August 2020.

In accordance with a press launch issued by the hospital, greater than 140 medical personnel have been concerned within the surgical procedure, which took 23 hours to finish. As Jessica later shared on TikTok, Joe was given each the face and fingers of a 47-year-old donor.

He started his restoration with virtually 14 weeks at NYU Langone underneath the care of his physicians. He tells PEOPLE that these days have been crammed with nerve ache, occupational remedy and hand exercises by way of the ache. He additionally needed to relearn primary motor expertise, like strolling and leaping.

The history-making operation earned Joe some notoriety, and he began sharing his life on-line. He frequently posts movies in regards to the double transplant, paperwork his progress and solutions viewers’ questions. Joe has over 240,000 followers between TikTok and Instagram, however love proved to be probably the most priceless present he bought from social media.

He first related with Jessica practically 4 years in the past, when he despatched her an Instagram message about her Boston Terrier. She’d just lately seen a documentary about his operation, and on the time, she was working with transplant sufferers in her work as a registered nurse. (She clarifies that she was by no means Joe’s nurse.)

For the primary six months, it was a long-distance relationship: Jessica was dwelling in Cleveland and Joe was in New Jersey, however their connection remained. They talked on the telephone on a regular basis, and Jessica drove some states over to go to. As she as soon as shared on her personal TikTok account, Joe as soon as flew out to assist Jessica transfer the day he was discharged from a hospital keep.

Ultimately, they discovered themselves in the identical place, and so they moved into a house in New Jersey collectively. In some ways, their lives look fairly much like every other couple round their age. Jessica commutes to New York Metropolis for her 12 p.m. to eight p.m. shift as a nurse, and Joe — who’s “a very good prepare dinner,” says his spouse — normally makes dinner for them to eat when she will get again later that night time.

There are much less typical points of their routine, as anticipated. They wish to eat at dwelling, however Jessica notes how issues that may take her 10 minutes to do — like slicing onions and tomatoes, for instance — might take Joe about an hour to complete.

“He’ll choose me up from work and drop me off on the practice station. He’ll take my automobile in to get repairs as a result of I do not need to do this,” she shares. “I will reduce the greens within the morning, after which he makes dinner at night time with what he can do.”

She provides, “His actions of each day dwelling is perhaps a bit bit completely different than mine and yours, however we’re fairly regular.”

But there are “regular” components of Joe’s former life that he is needed to dwell with out. He cannot work on vehicles anymore. He cannot actually do an excessive amount of bodily work along with his fingers, particularly not outdoor, as he is notably delicate to excessive climate.

Whereas Jessica is at work, Joe is ready to pursue passions each born of his damage and revisited after the accident restricted his hobbies. He is presently within the means of writing a ebook, and he additionally runs his personal clothes model referred to as 80 P.c Gone.

He at all times favored trend, and on the finish of highschool, he thought of going someplace like NYU to pursue design. However that was an costly future, so he gave up on the dream and went to work as a substitute. Life after the transplant has supplied him the time, area and platform to offer trend one other probability. He now sells his designs printed on garments and equipment as an internet retailer.

Joe and Jessica continued constructing an viewers on-line with their particular person content material and their love story, which has warmed the hearts of hundreds of thousands of viewers. Jessica says she inspired Joe to maintain posting due to his rarity and, conversely, due to all that he represents.

“There’s different face transplant recipients on the market, however none of them are as energetic as Joe. Joe’s one of many youthful ones, and he is one of many fortunate ones that does not have mind harm points both as a result of a whole lot of the face transplant recipients do have some psychological incapacity as nicely,” she explains to PEOPLE. “So I used to be like, ‘You’ve gotten the right persona, the right story.'”

His dream is to be a motivational speaker, so he was eager to place his experiences on the market within the curiosity of serving to others. Their inboxes are flooded with messages that reaffirm that Joe is heading in the right direction, and although the couple cannot reply to every part, their collective energy conjures up him to maintain going.

Generally Jessica will get messages from mother and father who hope their kids with disabilities will discover a romantic accomplice someday. “There’s a whole lot of completely different points to it: Joe motivating folks to proceed [despite] their well being points,” she says. “Then on the flip aspect, us as a pair motivating folks that may have a incapacity or look completely different that you could nonetheless discover somebody.”

Their public presence does sufficient good — selling Joe’s enterprise, spreading his message and galvanizing others — to make negativity barely extra bearable. Jessica is getting higher at dealing with the haters who carry unprovoked spite to their feedback sections. Even once they’ve pushed her to her limits, she’s discovered to “simply block and delete” as a substitute of preventing again.

“It doesn’t matter what, in case you reply, you are the unhealthy one. You are the one which’s responding, so that you’re getting defensive. It is like a revolving door. It does not cease generally,” says Jessica. Nonetheless, she admits that whereas mean-spirited consideration can harm emotions, it usually helps in different methods.

“As soon as I begin seeing hate notifications, I am like, ‘Oh, a video have to be going viral, actually’ … One video on TikTok hit 120 million views,” she says. “There’s issues that I do to forestall the hate, however clearly it comes by way of … When it is older folks too, I am like, ‘Aren’t you manner too outdated to be that imply?'”

Joe, for his half, stays solely unbothered by his naysayers, if not a bit amused by them.

“I prefer it. I feel it is humorous,” he says merely. “As a result of they don’t seem to be going to say it to your face. I am additionally 6-foot-1, fairly huge shoulder-width, so nobody’s going to say that to me in particular person. We have had no unhealthy experiences in particular person.”

He continues, “I grew up in a unique time the place issues have been stated much more on Xbox than they have been on TikTok and Instagram these days. So these phrases do not have an effect on me in any respect, and I simply snicker at them.”

No matter which interactions increase their content material, viral fame has its extra materials perks too, like free engagement images from a photographer who knew their content material. Their movie star standing extends offline as nicely, although Jessica claims that she’s “by no means” acknowledged by folks when she’s by herself. They have been even approached by native followers once they traveled to Hawaii for his or her nuptials in December.

When the duo stated their vows on the island of Oahu, they discovered themselves on the proper place and on the proper time. With Jessica’s relations in California and Joe’s household in New Jersey, they selected Hawaii to keep away from placing pressure on their households.

“We needed a sundown marriage ceremony in order that the solar wasn’t an excessive amount of on Joe,” Jessica provides. “It was actually fairly. Like a pleasant breeze, [and] it is simply him and I.”