Double Hand Surgery, How Much Therapy Will Heal It?

It has been a year since Jeff Kepner became the first man to have double hand surgery, and is only able to move his thumb and index finger to pinch together and hold things between them. He cannot tell the difference between a wooden block and his wife's hand. He had lost both his hands and feet due to a srep infection, and the infection caused the blood to stop flowing to his limbs, and while taking drugs for the strep, his joints were damaged. After the amputation, he used prosthetics and was able to do a lot of things. His wife thought hand transplants would solve all the problems. He is still in hours of therapy, doing the same repetitive hand exercises. His family had thought that when the surgery was done a year ago, that everything would go back to normal and became the chef and softball player he was before. However, the surgery is just a start.

This article relates to science concepts of hand transplants. Hand transplants are hard to heal with, as they include bones, skin, tendons, nerves, and blood vessels. It is not as easy as an organ transplant, and takes longer time to recover. This also relates to how bacterial infections can pay a big toll on you if not found in time. Kepner had his limbs amputated because of the infection and stopped the blood flow, and yet, Kepner can't feel the sensation or move his new hands that much. Not only is this one hand transplant, but two.

Kepner's story was written in this article because this shows that with risky situations such as going with double hand transplants, you need to prepare yourself with failure and success. Kepner has had his hand transplants for over a year already, and so far, he is wearing a fleshy piece on his arm and lugs it to hours of therapy, and he seems to be giving up. This shoes that though surgery can be worth it, it's not going to happen just like that. This is also another story of a man not giving up and has hope of being able to cook again and play on the Wii with his daughter.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/08/26/double.hand.transplant/index.html?hpt=C2