B.C. man will be first Canadian to receive double hand transplant
COQUITLAM, B.C. - A Coquitlam man says he needs to raise $60,000 to cover medical expenses when he returns to B.C. following a historic double-hand transplant in Ontario.
Rick Thompson said depending on the availability of a donor, the 14 to 24-hour operation could take place by the end of the summer. It will make him the first double hand transplant recipient in the country.
He and his wife Rita and their two dogs Tasha and Choppy are moving east April 1 to prepare for the operation.
All the costs of the transplant operation as well as physiotherapy and medication afterwards are covered by Ontario Health. Thompson has started a GoFundMe campaign to raise $60,000 to cover the cost of medicine and rehab he returns to B.C.
“What happened is that the team in Ontario applied to B.C. for reimbursement,” Thompson said. “The B.C. government denied any funding because they don’t view it as a necessary transplant. In their view, you don’t need hands to live. It’s not a lifesaving transplant in their eyes.”
The B.C. Ministry of Health was contacted Tuesday afternoon did not comment by deadline.
Thompson’s medical ordeal started in April, 2015.
He was at work in the evening and felt like he was developing the flu. He decided to go home to try to sleep it off.
He went to bed and a couple of hours later woke up. He was thirsty and wanted a glass of water.
“My feet were on fire like they were burning. I could barely walk,” he said. “I stumbled downstairs to where my wife was watching TV and last thing I remember is collapsing.”
He was taken to hospital where he was placed in a medically induced coma. He had contracted bacterial meningitis, possibly through a cut or a scrape, and went into septic shock. His wife was told he had about a five per cent chance of survival.
Thompson woke up six weeks later in Royal
Columbian Hospital. He still had his hands and legs.
“That’s when they gave me a choice to either face amputation or go to palliative care and let the disease take over. We were given about three hours to think it over.”
After the coma and the medication, Thompson was still dazed and confused. The only way his wife could explain to him what was going on was to draw a stick man with no hands and no legs and point at him.
They decided to amputate, removing his hands and both legs below the knee in an 8 ½ hour operation.
Afterwards, he said, it felt odd only seeing bandages where his hands and feet used to be.
“My first thought was: ‘I made the wrong decision,’” he said.
But he said through all the pain and the support from his wife, family, mom and church, “we made it through.”
Thompson has been able to walk and workout on a treadmill at the gym with special prosthetic legs which he’s had his since 2016.
But prosthetic hands aren’t yet as good as prosthetic legs. At best, they provide about 20 per cent of normal hand dexterity, he said.
About two years ago, he began exploring hand transplants. He said about 110 have been performed around the world. Only one has been in Canada and that was in 2016 in Toronto. Through doctors at St. Paul’s Hospital in downtown Vancouver, he contacted a team at St. Joseph’s Health Care and University Hospital. In October, 2018, he went to meet them and was chosen as a double-hand candidate after medical and psychological testing.