Face Transplant: Is Dallas Wiens Next In Line?

(CBS/AP) Dallas C. Wiens wants to be able to smile, to smell the rain, to feel his 3-year-old daughter's kisses.

"I do miss my sight," said Wiens, "But I miss the sensation of my face and my sense of smell the most."

Two years ago, Wiens' face was burned away in an electrical accident. Over the course of about two dozen surgeries, doctors were able to transfer skin and muscle from Wiens' back and thighs onto his charred skull. Yet his face is devoid of features.

Now, he has new hope. Thanks, in large part, to the new federal health care law which allows the 25-year-old Fort Worth, Tex. man to be covered by his father's insurance, Wiens may become the third person in the U.S. to undergo a face transplant.

Pictures: Most Amazing Face Transplants

"I'm a little nervous as you can expect with any major procedure like this. I'm extremely excited over the possibility of just having a normal life back," he said. "There's no words to describe what that would be like."

Wiens has no memory of the November 2008 accident that took his face. Working as a contractor, he was helping his brother and uncle paint a church when, while high above the ground on a boom lift, he hit a power line.

He was in a coma for three months and spent a total of six months at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas undergoing surgeries. Medicaid paid for his initial care at Parkland, but he was dropped from the federal health care program for the poor when his disability payments put him over its income limits. As a disabled person, he'll be able receive Medicare by June.

Pictures: Most Amazing Face Transplants

In the meantime, he needs his father's insurance to help him pay for anti-rejection drugs, which will cost $1,300 to $2,000 a month, Wiens said. He was able to qualify for his father's insurance because a provision of the federal health care law extends family insurance coverage to adult children until age 26.

The Department of Defense will pay for the cost of surgery, he said. It's underwriting the transplant with the hope of eventually being able to help soldiers with severe facial injuries.

Dr. Jeffrey Janis, chief of plastic surgery at Parkland Health and Hospital System, said when he met Wiens, his head was "a burned skull." Janis was the one who first told Wiens about the possibility of a face transplant.

"It's really miraculous that he was able to survive surgery, leave the hospital," Janis said.

About a dozen face transplants have been performed worldwide since the first one, a partial transplant in France in 2006.

Wiens will likely wait months before a donor is found. A donor would have to match Wiens' blood type and have a skin color and texture similar to Wiens. This according to Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, who along with a team of more than three dozen will perform the face transplant at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Wiens also knows that after the transplant, it will take time for him to regain feeling and functionality in his face.

He said his daughter - who refers to his facial deformity as his "boo boo" - and his faith have kept him motivated and given him a purpose.

"She says, 'Daddy has a boo boo, but God and the doctors are making Daddy's boo boo all better,"' said Wiens.

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