The first person in the UK to have a double hand transplant has said writing a letter to thank his surgeon has been one the highlights of his first nine months since the operation, as well as being able to clap for his favourite rugby league team.
Chris King, 57, described how he has got his life back since the surgery last July, when he became the second person to have a hand transplant at the UK’s specialist centre for the operation at Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) and the first to have both hands replaced.
King,from Rossington near Doncaster, said he can now do a range of tasks, including writing, making tea and gardening as he progresses even faster than his surgeon anticipated. He said he was improving every week and his next aims are to tie his shoelaces and button up his shirt – he said he had already cracked undoing them.
Looking at his hands, King said: “They are my boys, they really are.
“It’s been going fantastically. I can make a fist, I can hold a pen, I can do more or less the same functions as I could with my original hands. There are still limitations but I’m getting back to the full Chris again.”
King has also discovered he is now ambidextrous. “When I picked a pen up first time was with my right hand,” he said. “The next time I picked it up it was left. I might be able to write with both hands now.” He said: “I think it will be the icing on the cake when I can do my laces, and I don’t think that’s far off.”
King lost both his hands, except the thumbs, in an accident involving a metal-pressing machine at his workplace in Doncaster four years ago.
Consultant plastic surgeon Prof Simon Kay, who carried out the operation and two other hand transplants, believes the operation could become as routine as a kidney transplant.
Kay said he was amazed to receive a handwritten Christmas card and thank you letter from King.
Mark Cahill, 55, was the first hand transplant patient in 2012 at LGI, and a third man, who has not been named, became Kay’s third successful transplant patient earlier this year when he was given two new hands and a new forearm.
Two female patients are scheduled for surgery at the LGI as soon as donors become available.
Kay said: “The programme is now well-established. It’s now become mature. We understand the indications, the process. We now have three transplant patients completed and another two to go.”
“We would like hand transplantation to be as routine and unremarkable as kidney transplantation,” he said.
Last year, NHS England awarded Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust the contract to become the UK’s specialist centre for hand transplants.
Referring to King, Kay said: “He’s proved to be, as he proved right at the beginning, a very robust, resilient patient, very enthusiastic about his hands, and I think he’s absolutely delighted.”
“When you bear in mind he will go on improving for another two years, he’s really remarkable – a real vindication for the surgery he’s had.”
“He’s doing more, sooner than we expected. He’s well ahead of our expectations.”
Cahill, a former pub landlord from Greetland, near Halifax, West Yorkshire, has since gained almost complete use of his transplanted hand. He reportedly used it to save his wife’s life last year after she had a heart attack.
Kay urged people to consider the need for future donors. Donating a hands is not yet an option on the organ donor card, but it can be discussed with potential donors if the opportunity arises, a spokeswoman for the NHS’s organ donor register said.
UK"s first double hand transplant patient delights in writing letter to thank surgeon
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