Penn's Getting Hands(y)

Penn Medicine held a press conference yesterday to announce details of the its first double-hand transplant.  According to the Richmond-Times Dispatch, Lindsay Ess is only the third patient in the nation to have the procedure performed successfully.  This badass procedure was such a big deal that it took 30 doctors and nurses to pull it off!  After a donor was identified and an anonymous benefactor provided a private jet to get Ess to Philadelphia in time for the surgery, the team from HUP spent 11.5 hours to attach every bone, muscle, artery and nerve.

Not only is the transplant a groundbreaking feat, but Ess is also an extremely colorful character in and of herself.  Ess is a quadruple amputee, due to an infection related to a prior surgery, but she's also a fashion show producer, teacher and, uh, a motivational-speaker-YouTube-sensation!  

Ess's inspirational YouTube videos tell her story of the obstacles she has had to overcome, like learning to use artificial limbs and coping with an eating disorder. What keeps her going, she says in one video, is the hope that people will be inspired by her struggle. Her pathway to becoming a transplant candidate wasn't easy, either. Penn was as selective with their transplant candidates as they are with admissions!  They held "scores of meetings, surgical rehearsals and... even medical ethicists to make certain this was the right thing to do and Ess was the right candidate." At one point, she was questioned in great detail about behavior that could be seen as attention-seeking.

In the end, Penn was able to pull off a super-badass surgery, and it appears that everything was successful.  Now we'll just need to wait until Princeton is able to one-up us with a triple-hand transplant or solve some other crazy medical malady.