In 2018, Joe DiMeo’s life changed forever. At just 18 years old, he fell asleep behind the wheel of his Dodge Challenger after a night shift and crashed. The accident left him with burns covering 80% of his body and launched him into a long medical battle—one that began with a three-month coma.
Now 26, Joe is sharing his story in PEOPLE’s I Survived YouTube series, recalling both the pain and the triumph that led to his groundbreaking face and double hand transplant in 2020.
Though unconscious in the beginning, Joe remembers hearing voices around him in the hospital—and being haunted by the agonizing burn treatments that followed. “They had to strip away the bandages in the tank room,” he explained. “They weren’t trying to hurt me, but the pain was unbearable. You can feel every bit of it.”
During his coma, Joe says he dreamt of walking his dog, who had passed away years earlier. “I thought I was in the afterlife,” he recalled.
Recovery was grueling. After weeks in a burn unit and time at a rehabilitation center, he returned home to his parents, dependent on them for everything. “I felt like a 20-year-old infant,” Joe admitted. “My mom cooked, cleaned, did laundry—while I just sat on the couch with my dog. That wasn’t the life I wanted.”
In 2019, Joe met Dr. Eduardo D. Rodriguez at NYU Langone, who determined he was a candidate for a rare and extremely risky face and double hand transplant. Two previous attempts on other patients had failed. But Joe wasn’t afraid. “The risk of dying didn’t bother me,” he said. “I just wanted a chance.”
In August 2020, more than 140 medical professionals worked for 23 hours to perform the transplant, giving Joe a new face and hands from a 47-year-old donor. “At first, I wanted perfection,” Joe admitted. “But I realized authenticity was more important.”
Then came an unexpected gift: love. Jessica, now his wife, first learned about him during nursing school, when a professor showed her a documentary about his case. At the time, she only thought, That’s so sad—he was such a handsome guy.
Years later, Joe reached out to her on Instagram. They built a long-distance relationship that eventually brought Jessica to New Jersey. In December 2024, the couple eloped in Hawaii.
Today, they share their life openly on TikTok and Instagram, despite facing occasional criticism. For Joe, it’s all worth it. “I lost 80% of my skin, and I live with another man’s face and hands,” he reflected. “But I also found Jessica. Without the accident, I might still be an arrogant 26-year-old. Now, I’m grateful for the life I have—and especially for her.”
