Aimee Copeland, a woman who lost both hands, a leg and a foot to a gruesome flesh-eating infection last year, now has bionic hands with such incredible fine-motor skills, they act just like natural hands. She made the rounds on Today and CNN, demonstrating how well the hands work; picking up items as small as Skittles, writing on paper with a pen, using a hair straightener and folding a towel.
Aimee cut her leg in May of 2012 when she fell from a home-made zipline at the Little Tallapoosa River and contracted a rare disease called necrotizing fasciitis, a bacterial infection that devours victims' flesh and quickly spreads throughout the body. Aimee's organs were failing and due to the rate at which the bacteria was spreading, doctors made the decision to amputate her limbs to prevent it from spreading further. One in four victims of this flesh-eating bacteria die from it, and though Aimee needed four amputations, she survived.
Now Aimee is making a gradual return to what life was like before the incident, with the use of "i-limb ultra revolution" prosthetic hands from Touch Bionics. Though they can cost up to $120,000 each, she is the first woman in the world to be fitted with this new version of the bionics hands, and received them for free when she agreed to be the spokesperson for the company. Georgia Tech Coordinator of Prosthetics, Robert Kistenberg, is working with Aimee on how to use the robotic hands.
"These hands are going to allow Aimee to do more than any other hands that are currently available in the world," Kistenberg told CNN.
"This just feels very freeing. It's more lightweight, absolutely, and the hand actually, you know it seems like this could be my actual hand" she told CNN on Friday. When strapped to her arm, they pick up electrodes through the skin and are given direction from the movement in her muscles, which tell the hands how to move.
The I-Limbs are controlled with "biosim software" and can be configured with an app using Bluetooth. She can set the hands into different gestures and grip positions such as "index point mode or lateral key mode." Setting these different grip positions are important when doing fine tasks such as tying shoelaces.
"It feels amazing. The other arms I had didn't feel like an extension of my body," she says of other prosthetics she's tried. She hopes to also have a bionic leg by the end of the year.
"I really want to start cooking, so I really want to be able to maybe make myself a yummy veggie pie or something for myself when I get home, maybe knit a hat or something," she says. She also looks forward to cleaning again, telling Today she's "sort of OCD."
