Last August, Hardison underwent a 26-hour surgery to replace his face with that of a 26-year-old bike mechanic who’d been killed in a cycling accident. Though there had been 37 face transplants since the first was performed in France in 2005, Hardison’s was by far the most extensive. Dr. Eduardo D. Rodriguez, head of the NYU Langone Medical Center face-transplant program, told Hardison he had only a 50% chance of surviving the procedure, since no one had successfully transplanted as much face and scalp tissue before.

“Everything in life has a risk,” Hardison tells TIME. “When it’s your time to go, you’ll go—whether you’re walking down the street and get hit by a car or you’re lying on the operating table.”

A year after the surgery, Hardison says he’s doing great. Though he remains on potent drugs to prevent his body from rejecting his face, so far, that hasn’t happened. He’s happy with his new life and recently took his five children to Disney World, where he was able to swim with them for the first time since his face injury in 2001. “I would’ve given up a long time ago if it wasn’t for them,” Hardison says of his kids.