Woman Shot by Husband Describes Forgiveness and Face Transplant

Just take a breath. I still love my husband.

I, I can't talk about what happened. I'm not gonna say whether- Whether he meant to do it or not.

Yeah. Um, that's between me and him. Do you forgive him?

I forgive him the day he did it. I have to. How? How could you?

I don't know. It's just the way stuff was happening.

I knew something bad was gonna happen. I just never dreamed it was that.

He was sentenced to seven years. She, to a lifetime of pain.

She underwent 27 surgeries just to function, while dreading having to walk out the door.

Worst of all, she said, that she frightened young children.

And a little girl said, "There's a monster, mommy. There's a monster."

So I took out my driver's license and I told her, I told the mom, the dad, I said, "Do you not care?

I want to tell you, talk to your daughter."

I said, "That I had a bad, bad person shoot me."

I said, "That's why you never pick up a gun."

And I said, "Look at my driver's license."

I said, "This is what I used to look like."

And the dad's like, "No, no, leave it after."

I said, "No, she needs to know that there aren't monsters, you know?"

And the little girl said, "Wow." You know?

And the dad said, "Thank you." How often do you think of that picture on the driver's license?

How often do you think of the way you looked then?

You know what's so funny? I said I hated that picture.

Now I love that picture. Like, I was worried- I- ... about my weight and everything.

I'm like, "That was so foolish." You know? Five months ago, thanks to a donor, she would once again have the chance to try to look in a mirror and see a face.

She says, despite the difficulty of the surgery, she put herself in the hands of the brilliant surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic.

How do you decide, "I'm going to go for it.

I'm gonna do it."

I can't live the way I was. There's no way.

My whole face, I'll tell you, it was sliding.

On that last month before that surgery, I couldn't keep food in my mouth.

It was terrible. The moments before the surgery, is there something you said to yourself?

Was there something you did? Just gave my daughter a hug.

Eight doctors working 22 hours rebuilt her skeletal structure, reconnected nerve endings, blood vessels at a microscopic level.

There are some ph-