The skilled hands of a lost husband hold out hope for a tenacious artist

The Boston Globe | Liz Kowalczyk

To say Steven Lloyd was good with his hands would be an understatement. He refurbished the run-down ranch house he and his wife, Jodi, bought when they were engaged, installing walls and plumbing, and built a wrap-around deck and stone walls along the property’s edge. He repaired friends’ cars and restored a 25-year-old Jeep for off-roading.

But Lloyd was unexpectedly stricken by a massive brain hemorrhage in October, on the day before his 44th birthday. As he lay dying in the hospital, the New England Organ Bank called his wife at their New Hampshire home with a special request: Did she want to donate her husband’s hands?

Jodi Lloyd hung up and turned the question over in her mind for several hours. “Why let these hands go to waste?’’ thought Lloyd, recalling her decision in an interview this week. “Steven’s talents were in his hands. It just made sense to me.’’

Within days, doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston transplanted Steven Lloyd’s hands and lower arms onto Richard Mangino, who had lost his forearms, as well as his lower legs, to a bloodstream infection.
Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2012/02/02/hand_transplant_donor_was_gifted_with_his_hands_recipient_doing_well/