American soldiers lose their armored limbs

An American soldier who lost all his limbs during a 2009 bombing in Iraq was successfully paired with two hands. Speaking at a press conference on Jan. 29, Brendan Marrocco, the name of the veteran, said he felt like he had regained himself after this rare surgery.

Brendan Marrocco, who was an infantry soldier, became the first soldier to survive the loss of his arms and legs during the Iraq war. He underwent a complicated operation lasting 13 hours six weeks ago.

He is one of seven people in the United States who have been paired with both hands and the doctors warn him there will be a long way to go before he can be sure of whether his body will remove the extra joint.

"I haven't really felt or moved my hands yet. But then I will do it," Marrocco said in his first press conference after surgery.

With both hands and hands covered in bandages and braces, Marrocco said that his hands would change his life.

Brendan Marrocco said he was revived after hand grafting. (Source: CBS)

"I hate not having a hand. I don't have a lot of things to take away from you," Marrocco said, saying that losing a vacuum doesn't make you feel as depressed as losing your hand - "You talk with your hands, do a lot of things. with your hands When you have no hands, you will feel lost for a while. "

He said that the new hands make themselves "go back in time for 4 years" , until the time before the road bomb attack made him seriously injured.

One of Marrocco's doctors was Jaimie Shores, director of the Johns Hopkins Hospital transplant program, saying that Marrocco would spend another 2-3 years to do his homework, 6 hours a day and practice every day.

"Brendan now has a full-time job," Shores said, warning that the process will "take a lot of effort" when Marrocco's nerves recover and teach his body to use the new arm.

But he said Marrocco was chosen to join hands partly because the medical team believed he was ready to face the challenge.

"He is a young man full of hope and he is very stubborn. Stubborn in a positive direction. Nothing is limited to him," Shores said.

Shores said a patient who had a two-armed elbow from the elbow was now able to eat with chopsticks and tap the computer after three years of training. Marrocco said he hoped he could return to driving. He had a black Dodge car that he had never run before waiting for him.

In addition, he hopes to return to playing sports, like wheelchair racing."One of my goals is to participate in wheelchair racing during a marathon," he said.

In addition to complex surgery involving connecting bones, blood vessels, muscles, muscles, tendons, nerves and skin in both hands, Marrocco is currently undergoing treatment to prevent digging. new hands.

This includes extracting dead bone marrow cells from donors, so far successful in preventing new hands elimination and reducing the need for anti-rejection drugs, which may cause Organ infection or damage.

This is the first time people have had both hands successfully matched at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital. The world's first two-handed transplant is in 2008, in Germany.