The Frenchwoman who underwent the world’s first partial face transplant said on Monday she was grateful to now have a face “like everybody else” and wanted to resume a normal life.

Isabelle Dinoire, 38, smiled and laughed awkwardly in her first appearance before reporters since the operation in November, and spoke in slurred and labored tones.

She still has fine scar lines running from her nose down to her jaw, dividing her upper face from the transplanted lower area, and does not seem to be able to close her mouth.

“Since the day of the operation I have had a face like everybody else,” Dinoire told a packed news conference at Amiens hospital in northeastern France.

“I am now able to open my mouth and eat. Recently, I have also been able to feel my lips, my nose, my mouth,” she said, adding that feeling was returning gradually.

Dinoire was left disfigured after she was mauled by her own dog last May. She smiled as she described what she had suffered before surgeons gave her a new nose, lips and chin.

“Every day, when I left my house, I had to face up to people’s stares and what they were thinking,” she said. Eating and speaking were difficult.

She said she had been unconscious when the dog bit her, and only realized how badly she was injured only when she tried to smoke a cigarette and could not hold it between her lips.

Her horror at the extent of her injuries last May was followed months later by delight when she first looked in the mirror after her operation and felt no pain in the lower half of her face.

Asked about her plans for the future, she said: “I want to resume a normal life.”

EXERCISE AND TREATMENT

Dinoire will continue treatment and exercises to regain full use of her facial muscles after the 15-hour operation, in which surgeons used tissues, muscles, arteries and veins from a dead woman to rebuild her face.

The transplant has given hope to others disfigured by burns or accidents, but it has also raised psychological and ethical issues for the recipient and the donor family.

“I now understand people with a handicap,” Dinoire said, expressing hope that her operation could now help others.

Some newspapers in Britain and France have suggested that Dinoire deliberately took an overdose of sleeping pills before being attacked by her dog, and that the face donor had committed suicide.

Dinoire did not comment on these reports. Doctors have denied she tried to kill herself, saying she had been drowsy at the time of the dog’s attack because she had taken medicine to calm her down following an argument with her daughter.

Doctors have criticized media coverage of the case, saying much of it has been sensationalist, and repeated a plea for reporters to respect the patient’s privacy.

The team of surgeons that carried out the pioneering surgery said they had asked the Health Ministry to allow them to carry out five similar transplants. They did not say whether the ministry had responded.

“She is the first but she is not going to remain unique,” said Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard, a surgeon from a hospital in Lyon who was also involved in the transplant.

Doctors have said they cannot rule out rejection of Dinoire’s transplant in the future but said the use of bone marrow from the donor had helped to reduce such dangers.