Zion Harvey: Double Hand Transplant Patient Becomes First Child To Undergo The Procedure

Zion Harvey, 8, received a double hand transplant. Philadelphia Children’s Hospital surgeons told the media that they believe the Baltimore boy was the youngest patient to undergo the complicated 11-hour procedure.

Several years ago Zion Harvery contracted an infection which caused doctors to amputate both his feet and hands. Not long after recovering from the infection the little boy was fitted with leg prosthetics which allowed him to be able to learn to play video games, write, and feed himself.

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Philadelphia Children’s Hospital surgeons also stated that Harvey will not return to his Baltimore home until he was completed several weeks of physical therapy. Only a few adults in the United States have also undergone the either double arm or double hand transplants in recent years.

“When I was 2, I had to get my hands cut off because I was sick,” Zion Harvey stated in a video interview in 2014.The life-threatening sepsis infection caused the amputations of his extremities and multiple organ failure.

After the infection Zion underwent dialysis for two years and then his mother, Pattie Ray, donated a kidney to her son.

At age 4, after two years of dialysis, he received a kidney from his mother, Pattie Ray, and despite an early lifetime of hardship, Zion figured out not only how to get by, but how to do it with the widest of grins across his face.

The happy little boy said that if his surgery “gets messed up,” he will be fine because he still has his family. About 40 medical staffers aided in the double hand transplant operation. The team included 12 surgeons, eight nurses, and three anesthesiologists.

“We know what we have to do today,” Dr. L. Scott Levin reportedly said to the medical team before the hand transplant operation began. “I know everybody assembled here has a commitment to this patient and making this a reality for this little boy. We can have complications. We can fail. We can have trouble. But we’re not planning on it.”

Just a few days after the double hand transplant, Zion was already learning how to grip items with his new fingers. One of the first things the young patient said after recovering from the lengthy surgery brought smiles to the faces of the members of the medical team. The boy informed his mother that he and his sister Zoe wanted a puppy, and said the little ball of fur should live in his room.

“I just want to say this: Never give up on your dreams. It will come true,” Harvey told KYW-TV News.

Dr. Levin also expressed gratitude to the grieving family who agreed to donate the arms of a recently deceased child, Zion’s transplant would not have been possible without such a selfless act of kindness.

“I think the difference is finding a family who has the courage to relinquish the arms of a child who just died and give hope and life and quality of life to a child who’s still living,” Dr. Levin added. “I hope he’s the first of literally hundreds or thousands of patients that are going to be afforded this surgery.”

Zion Harvey said he has dreamed of learning how to throw a football for a long time, that goal will soon be able to come true thanks to the donor family and the doctors who performed the successful double hand transplant.