Since I’m in a very foul mood about the state of things in Louisville at the moment I thought I’d write about something positive and happy making. Something that reminds me how much I love this city and all the cool things we do here.
On Monday I went to the press conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first successful hand transplant ever. Ten years after doctors from Jewish Hospital, the University of Louisville and the Kleinert Kutz hand care center attached a new hand to his body Matthew Scott is healthy and the hand is functional. That’s amazing. Seriously. A new functional hand? Get out of here. Science kind of rocks.
I think having such a strong scientific and medical community in Louisville is (or should be) a major point of pride for all of us.
Did I ever tell you about my seriously small contribution to the science of hand transplants? No, well since you asked so nicely I’ll tell you now. While a very, very poor college student at UofL I participated in one and only one “we’ll pay you to be a lab rat” medical experiment. It consisted of several small electrodes (I guess that’s what they were) being attached to my hand and me repeating a series of very specific motions with my fingers and hand. Apparently serious data about muscles and nerves were being recorded with each little gesture and that info, along with billions of other bits of data eventually led to hand transplant magic. It didn’t hurt, was kind of cool to see the representation of my hand on the computer screen and I ate something other than spaghetti with $.98 Kroger sauce for a few days. Win-win.
January 30, 2009
Community Involvement, Science