A lady who was attacked by a violent dog and had her face torn off in the incident as well as being bitten more than 800 times has shown the outcomes of her remarkable facial reconstruction procedures.
When Jacqueline Durand, who was from Texas and was dog-sitting for a couple, visited their house in December 2021, just one day before her 22nd birthday, the dogs attacked and mauled her. Jacqueline had been dog-sitting for the couple.
As soon as Jacqueline opened the door, the dogs pounced on her and held her down before dragging her into the hallway and into the living room.
During the gruesome assault, they ripped Jacqueline’s nose, ears, lips, and cheeks down to the bone, and then they cut off her face.
Her face was left horribly damaged as a result of the traumatic event; however, Jacqueline has since had a series of intensive repair operations and has been sharing her story in an effort to encourage others and raise awareness about the risks posed by dogs.
She gave an interview to CBS News in which she said, “I didn’t ask for this, so I think that it’s time to show who I am now, and I can’t be scared of it.”
“I want dog owners to be familiar with their pets and to be able to communicate with sitters about how their dogs are doing,” she said.
Both of the rescue dogs, Bender, a boxer and pit bull mix, and Lucy, a German Shepherd, attacked Jacqueline at the same time. Jacqueline had encountered both of these dogs before.
But despite the fact that they gave off the impression of being “lovely” when Jacqueline initially saw them, the dogs’ demeanor abruptly shifted the instant she went through the door on that particular day, and the dogs, who had been allowed to wander about the home before, suddenly flung themselves at her.
When Jacqueline was asked to describe the terrifying experience, she responded, “When I felt the skin hanging from my face, I was just, I thought I was going to die.”
The assault continued for thirty minutes, and the only reason law enforcement officials found Jacqueline was because an alarm was set off when the front door was left open.
After they arrived at the site, it took them another 37 minutes to save her because the aggressive dogs made it too dangerous for the cops to enter the building at first.
After that, Jacqueline was transported to the hospital, where she had an emergency operation that lasted for seven hours. She had lost thirty percent of her blood supply.
Her parents reported that she had to be resuscitated “multiple times” when she was on the operating table, and that she was put into a medical coma for a week after the incident.
She was discharged from the hospital sixty days after she had been in, and she has since had eighteen operations to reconstruct her face. She has been documenting the progress of these procedures on TikTok.
During the first procedure, the physicians took skin from her buttocks and forehead to use as a graft in order to begin the reconstructive process.
During additional procedures, her upper lip was formed out of the skin taken from her left thigh, and her nose was reconstructed using tissue taken from the area of her forehead just above the hairline.
In one of the videos that she shared with her audience, she said, “It’s a long road to go to recovery but I am doing alright I am progressing.”
In another, Jacqueline revealed that she was still with her lover at the time of the incident and that he had only recently made a full recovery from his battle with cancer.
“Yes, we are still in a relationship. We have become much closer to one another as a result of this journey, and I am really glad that he has been there for me from the very beginning,” she added.
She continued by saying, “What some people might not know is that he had a cancer diagnosis and treatment in the last two years, thank goodness he’s clear, everything’s good with him, but I was there for him every step of the way and so now that the roles have been reversed it’s really a beautiful thing to see how true our love is.”
In spite of the horrific ordeal that Jacqueline went through, she continues to have a deep affection for canines and hopes to one day be able to work with them once again in the future.
She said in an interview with CBS, “I was thinking about dog training.” That has always been my goal, but I have no idea where my life is going to lead me just yet.