Abcnews (Lindsay Ess was just 24 years old when an infection forced doctors to amputate her hands and feet. Four years later, she underwent a hand transplant).
It's the simplest thing, the grasp of one hand in another. But Lindsay Ess will never see it that way, because her hands once belonged to someone else.
Growing up in Texas and Virginia, Lindsay, 29, was always one of the pretty girls. She went to college, did some modeling and started building a career in fashion, with an eye on producing fashion shows.
Then she lost her hands and feet.
When she was 24 years old, Lindsay had just graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University's well-regarded fashion program when she developed a blockage in her small intestine from Crohn's Disease. After having surgery to correct the problem, an infection took over and shut down her entire body. To save her life, doctors put her in a medically-induced coma. When she came out of the coma a month later, still in a haze, Lindsay said she knew something was wrong with her hands and feet. "I would look down and I would see black, almost like a body that had decomposed," she said. The infection had turned her extremities into dead tissue. Still sedated, Lindsay said she didn't realize what that meant at first.
For the next couple of years, Lindsay exercised diligently as part of the commitment she made to qualify for a hand transplant, which required her to be in shape. But the tough young woman now said she saw her body in a different way now.
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