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The day 43-year-old Melissa Loomis lost her arm had begun like any other. She’d been woken up by her dogs and went to take them out into the yard. On this day though, there was a raccoon lurking on the fence. When Loomis went to grab her dogs to save the raccoon though, the wild animal attacked her.
At the hospital, Loomis’ doctors administered rabies and tetanus shots, as well as antibiotics, before sending her home to rest.
After a few days though, Loomis could still feel shooting pain in her arm, so she returned to the hospital. The bite appeared small and innocuous, so her doctors simply prescribed her more antibiotics.
The pain only continued to intensify. By the time Loomis went in to see Dr. Ajay Seth, she’d gone through two or three types of antibiotics and her bite was “absolutely the worst infection [Dr. Seth had] seen in [his] entire career.”
“When I made the first incision [in Loomis’ arm],” Dr. Seth recalled, “all this bacteria came pouring out.”
Loomis immediately began an intense round of surgeries. By the seventh or eighth procedure, Dr. Seth had to break the news to her. No progress was being made, and Loomis, herself, felt that she was going to die.
“This is it, I’m sorry, I could save your arm,” Loomis recalled Dr. Seth saying to her. “I told him, ‘Save my life.’”
Dr. Seth amputated Loomis’ arm and was otherwise able to bring her to stable condition.
It was around this time that Dr. Seth was called away to an amputation and prosthetics conference in Canada. There, a team of researchers had introduced break-through prosthetic technology: a prosthetic limb that can still move and function like a real arm.
The technology is still being developed by the military, but Dr. Seth saw the technology and knew, immediately, that he wanted to make this happen for Loomis.
Installing the advanced prosthetic device would inevitably call for at least another surgery that would not only install the prosthetic, but also re-fire and connect the currently severed nerves in Loomis’ arm to the device. This way, the prosthetic will be able to sense and respond to Loomis’ brain, just as a normal arm would.
If Loomis’ surgery and prosthetic installation is successful, she will easily be the “most advanced amputee” in the world.
You can watch Loomis and Dr. Seth talk more about the upcoming surgery here:
