At the age of two, Zion Harvey, lost both his hands and feet to a deadly infection called sepsis. He had prosthetics attached to his legs so he could walk, but his arms ended in stumps. Zion learnt to function very well, teaching himself to eat, grip stuff and play video games, but he longed for more. The first question the doctor asked him was why he wanted hands. Zion replied that he wanted to hang from the monkey bars.

Sepsis had lead to multi-organ failure in Zion’s body, and he had had a kidney transplant with donation from his mom. Immunosuppressants had been prescribed to him so his body would not reject the new kidney. The fact that he was already on immuno-suppressants made him the ideal candidate to undergo this surgery.
Zion was placed on the transplant list in April, and within three months, he had a match. This was the first miracle in a series more to come. A team of 40 surgeons took part in a ten hour surgery to unite Zion’s arms with two new hands. First step was to connect the bones of both the segments, followed by the veins to establish a blood flow. Then the muscles and nerves were joined.
This whole surgery is incredible challenging, but what added to the magnitude of that was that it was a little human. Everything was reduced to a microscale, and the movements had to be excruciatingly precise.

“The issue with children is they have areas of bone called growth plates,” says Dr. Levin. “We had had to be very careful when we attached the donor hands to Zion that we did not violate or injure the growth plates because we want his hands to grow and lengthen.”
Two weeks after the surgery, the bandages on Zion’s new hands were removed. And their grip was tested with success. Even though Zion has a long way to go with therapy sessions and a lifetime of medicines, he is going to be just fine.

[adinserter block=”7″]

Author:Technology Blog