Thanks to anonymous donor, 8-year-old boy gets two new hands

A little boy from Maryland 'woke up smiling' with his new hands, said his doctor.

|
Matt Rourke/AP
Double-hand transplant recipient, 8-year-old Zion Harvey, smiles during a news conference Tuesday, at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) in Philadelphia. Surgeons said Zion of Baltimore who lost his limbs to a serious infection, has become the youngest patient to receive a double-hand transplant.

Eight-year-old Zion Harvey’s forearms were heavily bandaged but he was flashing big smiles Tuesday as he showed off his new hands.

Zion, who had lost his hands and feet to a serious infection, has become the youngest patient to receive a double-hand transplant.

"He woke up smiling," said L. Scott Levin, who heads the hand transplant program at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, according to the Associated Press. "There hasn't been one whimper, one tear, one complaint."

At a hospital news conference, the little boy demonstrated his grip. It was still delicate from the nearly 11-hour operation that took place earlier this month and required the help of a 40-person medical team, using steel plates and screws to attach his old and new bones.

He told reporters that waking up with new hands was "weird at first, but then good.”

Zion, who is from the Baltimore suburb of Owings Mills, Md., contracted sepsis as a toddler, resulting in numerous medical complications and the eventual amputation of both hands and feet. At just 4-years-old, he underwent a kidney transplant, thanks to an organ donation from his mother.

Only several adults in the country have received double-hand or double-arm transplants in the past few years, much less children. But Zion is a bright and precocious child, who has "a maturity that is way beyond his 8 years," Dr. Levin told the AP.

"It was no more of a risk than a kidney transplant," said his mother, Pattie Ray. "So I felt like I was willing to take that risk for him, if he wanted it – to be able to play monkey bars and football."

With the help of leg prosthetics, Zion has become remarkably active, able to walk, run, and jump. He has learned to use his new hands to write, eat, and play video games, and has been attending school. Physicians say he will spend the next several weeks in physical rehab before going home. But they hope he'll now be able to achieve more milestones, like his goals of throwing a football and playing on the monkey bars.

At the news conference were two rows of Zion’s relatives, and he asked them to stand.

"I want to say to you guys, thank you for helping me through this bumpy road," he said.

The donor's family chose to remain anonymous.

This report contains material from The Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Thanks to anonymous donor, 8-year-old boy gets two new hands
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/0729/Thanks-to-anonymous-donor-8-year-old-boy-gets-two-new-hands
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe