I was born a normal little boy. Life was happy, the world was wonderous, and Life, capital “L,’ was something beloved.
On some unknown day, at some unknown time, in some unknown event lost to memory, I experienced an event so very traumatic, I awoke with my right arm gone.
In its place, there was a stump – bone and skin fragments patched together and tidied up by a medical professional with all the tools of the 1980’s – the repair was crude, the stub incomplete, scarred, and utterly useless for day-to-day life.
I got by, as anyone with such a disability does. It wasn’t great, but it was survivable. Having my left arm, complete with my hand was sufficient – I mean, it wasn’t great, but it was enough to get along in a world designed for two arms.
Secretly, I longed for another arm. I was jealous of those who had them both. I was incomplete, broken, lesser-than, and society could see that.
My mother tried to foster life as best she could, but being unable to protect me from the events of which I lost my arm, there was an underlying sense of guilt she couldn’t get past. Instead, she tried everything she could, God bless her, to make life as easy as it could be. Alas, there wasn’t much to be done outside be the support a Mother is looked to for in the weakest moments.
At least I still had her, in the hard moments of social ostracization and internal turmoil.
In 1999, advances in neural and vascular microsurgery gave me new hope: physical limb transplants became a realistic possibility! I was hesitant to embrace the idea at first, unsure of what this new life could offer. Encouragement and a desperate want to get this sense of normalcy back I was robbed of in childhood ultimately prompted me forward.
I underwent the procedure. The initial procedure was pretty painless, and one morning in mid-April, I awoke to find my new right arm resting lightly next to me.
It felt as natural as breathing.
I felt complete for the first time since I had grown old enough to have a memory and a sense of self.
I took to the physical therapy with vigor. By that May, I was finally able to do something I had only envisioned in the dreams of a young man who has discovered the pleasures of, well, self-pleasure: I could close my hand and control the fast-twitch nerves enough to finish the job, shall we say?
Elation can’t fully explain it – sublime might be the only word that best captures the experience.
And yet, what I couldn’t have known, was that there was something wrong deep in this new arm of mine. At a genetic level, there was nothing to be done to protect against this inevitable rot that ultimately lead to its decay.
It took a few years for the degeneration to occur – I went to the doctors, I sought out guidance from every expert I could find.
Alas, there was nothing to be said or done – sometimes things just can’t be fixed, no matter the energy or effort you put into it; science and medicine do not have all the answers to the mysteries of this life. Applied Theory is just that, and evolves. There’s a reason it’s called ‘Practicing’ when it comes to medicine.
And thus, as the necrosis started in the farthest reaches of the arm – first the fingers, cut off one-by-one, I lost the parts of me most valuable, becoming misshapen again, and yearning to not lose what I had.
It was not to be.
First blackened fingers, then the stub of the hand. The elbow.
Oh, how I fought to keep that last bit – after the three years of having that arm, I wanted to keep what I could.
Those wiser than I made it clear it had to go.
So one night, deeply anesthetized, I had the last bits of that arm removed.
Problem was, the grafting point had traces of necrosis, so, in the process of getting and losing this arm, the price I had to pay was giving up a small portion of myself.
I wept for years, the stub even stubbier than it was before this process started.
There it was.
I was worse than before.
And over the next few years, I would get the options to have another grafted, and I would ultimately decline.
I wanted my arm back. I wanted my original arm back and cursed whatever that event was that took it, but I dared not take that risk again. To go through all of this again, to risk the rejection and what the pain and viciousness of that loss would take next time?
No. Not going to happen.
But I’m just a man, and men want and need what men want and need.
So one evening, I got the call stating there was a donor that would fit my injuries, and not only was it a perfect match, it was the closest in match they imagined I would ever see or have.
I was drunk when I made the decision.
I don’t regret that decision, but it’s important to know that my vulnerability was open to the world when I made that choice. Upon seeing it, it was a perfect match – something out a dream that I couldn’t believe.
I could not have realized the depth and scope of what it would take from me and others in the coming years, and the lengths I would have to go to to extract it from myself.
I remember thinking there was something different about it from the start. Magical – perfect, other-worldly.
The skin was an olive color; I was pasty white. I immediately began both simultaneously trying to match it’s beautiful skin, while also holding in my thoughts that I shouldn’t grow attached – I mean, I lost the last one through the cadence of time and the physiological changes of a boy becoming a man.
The first few years were spent wondering just when the rot was going to sneak in.
At the same time, I was changing in ways I could have never realized.
It… was changing me.
And I let it, embraced it. Friends stated they couldn’t believe my luck, family amazed that I was somehow different.
Except one.
My sister took me aside one day, years into the successful graft, and looked me square in the eyes:
“There’s something wrong with… that,” she said, pointing to my right arm.
I was confused, and honestly, a bit offended.
“What…?” I sensed a sort of jealousy at my sister’s derision of my source of happiness.
“I feel something, I don’t know, cold, maybe even sinister…”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
And I left it at that.
The years went on.
When I would see that sister at family gatherings, she was cautious, wary of something spoken but unknown. She was always kind, but kept her distance, standing to my left when she spoke.
I thought it quirky and enigmatic, but nothing to concern myself with.
Besides! I’d managed to keep this arm, this thing I wanted for so long, past the rejection date of the last! And every check-up was a glowing, resounding ‘Amazing!”
Behind closed doors, in those first years, I was always, almost neurotically checking in, making sure there was nothing wrong with this foreign body attached to me.
Every check-in was spoken to with a dismissive “Evverything’s great! There’s no signs of rejection. You’re worried about nothing.”
I was told “If you’ve managed to keep it this long, there’s no reason to believe you won’t keep it forever.”
In time, I came to believe it.
Which was my downfall.
Consider this: when you’ve so desperately wanted something so fundamental to your existence, you take the utmost care it in the beginning.
But we’re human. It’s in our very nature to take even the most precious of things for granted.
I am no different.
After those first years of worry, I began thoughtlessly considering I’d have this arm, this hand, forever. I stopped taking my anti-rejection meds as methodically as I had been for those years and years before. I began endeavoring in drugs, alcohol, and behaviors that were antithetical to what one does when having a transplant.
So somewhere in there, the vascular necrotitis began.
I also started losing control of the arm and hand. It started betraying me in subtle, little ways at first.
I’d be cutting an onion. Next thing I know, I’ve cut my thumb.
And while it bled… it did not feel.
I knew I had injured it – visibly, there was the damage.
But none of the signals that were supposed to make it to my brain registered.
Admittedly, I thought this an amazing superpower of sorts – if injury didn’t elicit pain, I realized, I think subconsciously, I had a fortuitous opportunity available to me: when it came to the difficult things before me, this hand would lead.
And what was strange was, in moments you’ll come to understand shortly, it almost felt like it was leading me.
As I said earlier – from the start, I found myself wanting to be more like it – wishing my body was more like this gift I had.
But it seemed to demand that of me, as well. Something was communicating from somewhere inside of it… beckoning me to… change.
Strangely, I received a call one day out of the blue.
“I know this is going to sound strange, so I’d like you to come in and talk about your arm.”
I went into the offices.
“There’s been advances in technology, and, well, I don’t know how to say this without upsetting you, but… we’re pretty sure we can regrow your arm.”
Something inside me recoiled.
I almost felt like throwing up.
“Why would I give this up?!” I yelled. “I’m perfectly happy with this!”
“Yes, but this isn’t *your* arm. This was a medical marvel in an of itself, but there’s no guarantee this will last forever. You wouldn’t have to medicate to live with it. You would be whole as yourself. You could be an example to the world!”
I refused. I stormed out of that meeting and didn’t see them again for ten years.
And that was to everyone’s detriment.
In that time, more feeling left. First, the finger tips. Then the wrist. The elbow, and ultimately, I had no full use of the arm. Stubbornly, I pushed on, lying to myself about what was happening to me.
It shriveled. It began to become impossible to do certain things. As a man with wants and needs, the ability to use it for basic needs became the standard – otherwise, it was a fight to get any sort of grip. I eventually gave up, but still bitterly, stubbornly refused to believe this precious thing I had so wonderfully received was beginning to fail.
I kept pushing through it, until one day, I just gave up and went back to the doctors.
And there, I found out two horrible truths:
First, was the origin of the arm – attached to me, to the place I had received such grievous wounds in my own time, was the arm of a girl who had been unceremoniously slaughtered and chopped into pieces by her own mother in some Frankenstein-like attempt to, and I quote the police report, “make her better.”
Second, the doctors had literally no idea how the arm had managed to last this long without rejection, secretly believing something the mother had done in her lab lead to the rejection not happening.
Because of the nature of organ donation, you never learn the name of the donor, or what else had become of the rest of the tissues, except to know that various parts went to various people or organizations for experimentation.
Lo and behold, there were others that had received other implantations from this mother’s lab, and they, too, were exhibiting signs of the same sorts of, I believe the word she used was “disassociating shrinkage of the attached bodies.”
I was in shock. I wasn’t supposed to have learned this, but I demanded answers of the new doctors handling my case, asking why? Why in the night did I get attacked by the thing most beneficial, precious to me? Why did I feel like I needed to be more like it than me? How was it I was losing the feeling? Why was it starting to feel foreign to me, and seemed almost to have a mind of its own at time, random pain suddenly shooting through me when seemingly nothing had happened.
They could only shrug, then the two doctors looked at each other nervously and knowingly.
That’s how I got my answers.
Too late.
That night, as I sat looking at it in the mirror, my arm – this precious thing that completed me physically and seemingly emotionally, started twitching. Pain was shooting through me, blinding me, agonizingly. I lost control of it, and tried to hold it with my other hand – I begged and pleaded with it, begged God or whatever is out there, to please, just make it like it was.
Again.
Too late.
There was no stopping this pain. There was no stopping the stochastic and erratic movement.
There was nothing but undeniable agony.
I put up with this for two days, trying to find a way to make it stop.
Then that Wednesday, I saw the tips of my fingers had started to blacken.
Whatever voodoo the matriarch witch of this arm’s origination had done was clearly dissipating. The blackness crept through the veins, and I could feel nausea coming over me.
This precious thing, this gift from so many years on, was now actively killing me.
I wasn’t in my right mind, a fit of panic, horror, and completely overwhelmed when I made the next decision.
I managed to pour and consume a few large glasses of Scotch before the flinging, flailing, necrotizing flesh I’d called an arm knocked over the bottle.
I grabbed the blackening arm and pulled in tight, then headed for the garage.
Managing to get it wrestled to the vice, I sinched it tight.
I recounted our experiences together, and how much I appreciated our time together, and how I was sorry for what it had become. That it never deserved what it sounded like it had gone through. That I didn’t deserve it, and it didn’t deserve what I had put it through.
And with my other hand, I pulled the rope on the chainsaw.
