This video clip (courtesy of TED) is so interesting that I just had to share it—with a little ‘seasoning’ of my own (an excerpt from one of my novels, below), of course!
“Turning Ephraimoglou back over, they raised the head of the bed until he was in a sitting position, and then carefully began to unwrap the bandages from around the stump of his right hand. Mariatos had of course informed him of what had been done, but it was nevertheless a shock for which he could not have been adequately prepared. A heavy, oppressive feeling began to fill his chest as he looked at the site of the missing hand, amputated just below the wrist, with the healing wound still raw and the bandages spotted with dark traces of blood.
Seeing it for the first time, it was still hard for him to believe; for what his eyes assured him must be true was at once belied by his sense of touch. He could still feel the member as if it were there—could still wiggle his non-existent fingers and clench his absent fist, and was still bothered by a dull ache and an annoying itch that he could not scratch.
He understood that it was only temporary. The hand would eventually be replaced within a few months in a complex reconstructive procedure with a fully functioning new one, already being prepared for the purpose—using his own induced pluripotent stem cells—in a Guardian medical laboratory in England. Nevertheless, he experienced a pervasive sense of bereavement—although whether that feeling of loss was for his bodily appendage or for something far greater, he could not fathom.”
—From The Sacred City by Damian Lawrence (Pentelicus Press, 2011)
For more fascinating developments on this topic, see also: Anthony Atala: Printing A Human Kidney (courtesty of The Huff Po).
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