Brooklyn mom tries out her new bionic hand in daily life

From The NY Daily News:

A Brooklyn mom's struggle to reclaim a normal life after a medical nightmare left her a quadruple amputee now has the ability to applaud her own progress.

Tabitha Mullings (pictured), 33, has been fitted with two prosthetic hands, one a bionic limb allowing her to turn doorknobs and hold her fiancé's hand.

"I miss that," said Mullings, who is now able to wear the engagement ring that her 36-year-old fiancé, Kahseem (Moe) Davis, gave her. "It will be more like a couple."

Mullings, who has been walking with prosthetic legs for more than a year, was fitted with two hands last week by technicians at Ortho Remedy Inc. in Cliffside Park, N.J.

Her left hand is a high-tech robotic device she controls by flexing the muscles in her arm. Sensors deliver electric impulses that activate the motorized hand, enabling her to do tasks that in her darkest days she feared she'd never do again.

Demonstrating, Mullings picked up a glass of iced tea and drank from it, admitting to some trepidation.

"It's like a mental game," she said, sweat beading on her face. "I'm afraid if I think, 'Open hand,' I'm going to let the glass fall. I don't have feeling in the hand, so that's what gets me nervous."

For now, the right hand is a cosmetic, flesh-colored limb that fits over the arm stump.

"I look at myself in the mirror now, and I think people will look at me, not my missing hands," Mullings said as her fluffy poodle, Powder, licked her robotic fingers.

"He's very protective of me," she said of the pooch.

The Daily News has chronicled the ups and downs of Mullings' 18-month recovery.

Her ordeal began in September 2008, when she went to Brooklyn Hospital Center for pain and was misdiagnosed with kidney stones.

Just days after doctors sent her home, she developed a sepsis infection that lapsed into gangrene, destroyed her limbs and robbed her left eye of sight.

Lengthening the delay in getting a correct diagnosis were city ambulance medics who twice refused to take her back to the hospital after she called 911 in agonizing pain, she said.

Mullings said her resiliency has been fueled by her determination to be an able mother to her three sons - Charles, 15, Enrique, 14, and Matthew, 10.

"This courageous woman sets an example for all of us, how to deal with adversity," said her lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein.