This is a special edition of nightline. Pushing the limits. Good evening. Thanks for joining us. Its been said the human spirit is the Strongest Force there is. Tonight its on full display. She had it all. Beauty, dreams, a bright future. All suddenly changed in a terrible turn of luck. Then the miraculous surgery that would redefine her, even giving her a new dream. Now abcs john donvan takes another look at one remarkable woman pushing the limits. Lindsay s. , a woman in her early 30s, a newbie to cross fit. A competitive sport that tests endurance and strength. With the notable thing being in cross fit, teams with space for athletes that look like this, and like this, also include athletes who have experienced severe injuries and even lost limbs. Like lindsay. But heres the thing about her that you might not be able to see. Its not just her legs that are so to speak borrowed. Whats not obvious to the naked eye is that her hands too are a gift from someone else. A gift she had not yet received when we first met her six years ago. When this and this were part of her reality. The most common questions i get are, how do you type . How do you text so fast . Just like chicken pecking. Reporter it was only when she was in her mid20s lindsay lost both her legs and both her arms. Before that, growing up, she was always one of the pretty girls. She even did some modeling. As a 24yearold, fresh out of virginia commonwealth university, lindsay had her eyes on a career producing fashion shows. You were on your way. Yes, i would say that was my dreams, as far as being an excellent student and well respected, were definitely coming true. Reporter but then she got sick. A blockage in her small intestine from crohns disease. Surgery followed and something went wrong, infection took over and shut down her entire body. To save her life doctors had to put her in a medically induced coma. When she came out of it, a month later, still in a haze i knew that there was something wrong with my hands and my feet. I would look down and i would see black. Almost like a body that had depom coesd decomposed. Reporter the infection turned her extremities into dead tissue. There was a period of time where they didnt tell me they had to amputate, but somebody from the staff said, honey, you know what theyre going to do to your hands, right . That was what i knew. Reporter overnight she found herself profoundly disabled. You dont have your hands now. Or my feet. Or your feet. What are the challenges . The challenges are independence, lack of control. Reporter getting prosthetic legs on always required help from her mom judith, who basically had moved back into her daughters life, back to the kind of care that would have been their connection 20 years earlier. Lindsay had discovered a lot of things about herself that she did better emotionally by not focusing on the life that was gone, that she hates needing so much help. I cant wait to brush my own hair. Im such an independent person. Then again im grateful i have a mother like that. What would i do . I want her to be able to touch me just the way that i touch her. Reporter she also learned that while she could adjust to the prosthetic legs, the prosthetic arms were just too heavy. These prosthetics are [ bleep ]. I cant do anything with them. I cant do anything behind the head. Theyre heavy. Theyre made for men. They are claws. Theyre not feminine whatsoever. Reporter besides, she realized, so much of our independence, our identity even, is in our hands. Ive accepted the fact that my feet are gone. Thats acceptable to me. My hands is not. Its still not. In my dreams i always have my hands. Reporter then she learned that doctors had just begun to have success transplanting hands. Hello, lindsay. Hi. Good to see you. Reporter december 2009, lindsay had begun meeting with dr. Scott levin, a transplant specialist willing to try the rare procedure of giving lindsay new hands, real ones, from a donor. Would i be able to go behind . Sure, yeah. Hopefully youll be doing your hair. I wanted to try to get this other knee up reporter lindsay worked out diligently, all part of the commitment she made to qualify for the transplant. Have you fallen . Yes. I fall. You have to fall, you have to go through pain in order to achieve other things. Reporter she is just so tough in these moments, working her body like this. But back in her apartment, she talks about her body again and what she sees now in a different way. People used to turn and look at me when i walked down the street because of how beautiful i was. Now they look at me because im in a wheelchair, i have no hands and feet. Im a little micromanaging. Its okay. Reporter what that has told her . What does it matter what my hair looks like . What does it matter what im wearing so much . Reporter but hands, they matter. Not just as much as before. More. I try to defy what everybody else says is impossible. They said i wasnt going to live. I lived. They said i wasnt going to walk. Im going to walk. They said i wont have my hands. Im going to have my hands. Reporter four months later, april 2011, i pay a visit on dr. Scott levin at university of pennsylvania who talked about how complex the surgery lindsey had signed on for. You have normal sensation here. The hookup of the new hand is relying on her nerves growing into the new muscles from the donor. The nerves have to grow into those muscles, which takes months, could take a year. She may or may not get truly functioning hands back . We tell patients, we can fail you. The operation can fail. Whats failure . The part doesnt survive and we have to reamputate the transplant. Thats failure. Reporter the preferred donor would be female with hands of the right size and skin color that matched. Part of the wait is for those body parts to become available. That was, of everything we discussed, the part lindsay found most difficult, about this unnamed donor that everyone was waiting for. I hate thinking about that. Why . Because i just dont somebody out there right now is alive. You hate thinking about it because it means that person would have to die. Uhhuh. I think, though, whoever the hands will be, will be carried out with purpose. Theyre not just going to be used to look pretty. Reporter september 2011. My spirits are pretty good. Were waiting for this a long time. Reporter after four years without hands and feet, a month on the waiting list, it has happened. Someone, somewhere, has died. And her hands are being delivered to dr. Levin who has also now phoned lindsay, telling her to get from richmond to philadelphia immediately. The phone rang. What did he say . Theres a donor ready for you. And i think my mom and i both jaws dropped. Reporter speed critical. The surgery had to start within hours. Lindsay and her mom also took a moment to pause. My first thing that we did was we prayed for the family. Who lost their young daughter. Reporter and then it begins. Bye, love you when we come back, lindsays long journey from hospital bed to cross fit and her attempt to lift that massive barbell in competition. I was a smoker. Hands down, it was, thats who i was. After one week of chantix, i knew i could quit. Along with support, Chantix Varenicline is proven to help people quit smoking. Chantix definitely helped reduce my urge to smoke. Some people had changes in behavior, thinking or mood, hostility, agitation, depressed mood and suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping chantix. Some had seizures while taking chantix. If you have any of these, stop chantix and call your doctor right away. 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Separate skin, separate muscle biopsy at this point in time reporter two separate teams working at once. One dedicated to the left hand, the other working on the right. After 11 1 2 hours, the surgery comes to an end. How are you feeling . Reporter hours later lindsay wakes up with someone elses hands, now hers. Have you looked yet . No . Okay. Ive only looked, peeked down at one. They feel like normal fingers. Normal hands. Reporter the initial signs are good. This is more than we could ever hope for. Her Blood Pressures good. All the parameters are good related to how the blood flow is in and out of her new arms. This is, if you will, a pictureperfect course so far. Reporter ahead for lindsay were months of therapy. None of it easy. One, two, three, four its easier with her helping me. Youre doing well. Each repetition should get easier, youre getting looser. How many is this one . This is only number two. Reporter as lindsay becomes acquainted with her new hands tell me when you first actually saw them. That they were yours. Actually, the first couple of days, i refused to look at them. How come . Kind of like one of those scary movies. You know, like one of those im too scared to look. Its reality. Reporter its not yet perfect reality. To prevent rejection the surgeon has had to leave pouches of excessive fat ask skin on her normally toned and thin arms. Her new hands and arms look like they did in fact belong to someone else. The skin color is never going to be the same. The lower arms to your upper arms. Its hard to ask questions like that, because im just so grateful to have them, for them to not match is to me beside the point . Yeah. Reporter january 2012. Four months after surgery, lindsays doctors are amazed by the pace of her recovery. They did not expect to see fine motor control for at least another 12 to 18 months. But to see this at this early stage is very encouraging. Reporter her muscles are reacting and she can pick up lightweight objects. Finally she goes home with her prognosis Getting Better and better all the time. Oh my god, look at your extension, incredible. Reporter nine months after surgery straighten these out if you can. Hold them out. Squeeze. Reporter lindsay could sense hot and cold. A tingling sensation that bothers her. Nevertheless indicates that nerves are growing back. The therapy continues. The dark pigment in her hands is fading away. Excess skin and fat removed. All ahead of schedule. If you let my pinky go too, i can move these two and at the same time i see. Reporter a year and a half after the surgery, there was this one small thing lindsay once told us that she aspired to do herself. I cant wait to brush my own hair. Reporter here it is. These are your hands now. They feel like your hands to you . I feel like theyre a gift. And theyre always going to be a gift. I mean you can say that theyre mine. And they are mine. But theyre still a gift. Thats much better. Yes, much better. Reporter we continued paying visits to lindsay, watching her get back the thing she wanted most, her independence. A few months ago when we visited it was clear she is making the most of her new hands. How have you been . Very good. Very, very good. How are your hands . Hands are great. Still learning a lot with them. You know, Something Different every day. It seems like an obvious question. You do feel a great deal more independence than you did . Yes. Like a completely different completely different. I mean, im its 100 different. 100 different, yeah. I mean, i drive. I live on my own. I have a dog. A house. To take care of cleaning, dishes, cooking its all you, youre doing it yourself . I would like it to be all me. But some things are like i cant put my hair up. Button blouses or jeans. Tie shoes. If i could do changing of shoes, or i want my hair a specific way, then obviously my mom helps me, but and im not doing too well at cooking yet. Reporter and now she has found cross fit. Which she loves. Youre a pretty competitive person. Yeah. Yeah, to a fault. And you have this thing for taking on hard challenges. Yeah. Reporter talk about hard. It has been hours and hours of workout s and specialized training. If you dont take chances in life, big chances and big things arent going to happen. Its been working so far for me. Im not going to stop now. Reporter which brings us now back to the moment of the lift. This was at a competition in arizona where lindsay worked through the whole gauntlet of physical challenges as a member of her team which is called the some Assembly Required team. Her goal when it came to the dead lift was to pull 73 pounds with one arm. Easy to imagine. Lifting a barbell from the ground with arms that are not yours, that are attached by rods, that are sewn on by stitches. Reporter even as she prepared for this, she was struck by a funny thought. Oh, i love that scene. What scene . Hes going for a clean jerk of over 1,500 power plants reporter from a saturday night live lots of years back. Hes about to dead lift. Hes getting ready to do it and his arms rip off. Blood everywhere. Hes talking while spraying blood, hilarious. Every time i lift, i think about that. Theyre never going to do that, but its funny to me. To think about it. Reporter there is no risk of that happening here. These hands are totally attached to you, theyre not going to give. Yeah. Never say never, but i have faith that they wont. Reporter so lindsay went out onto the competition floor. An event honoring wounded veterans. Athletes competing against one another regardless of disability. Look at how her hands served her. Rowing. Lifting. One exercise after the other. But at the dead lift, with the weight of 55 pounds, the clock defeated her. She could not get it done in time. And she left without the victory she wanted. The wheelchair. And the first one. Reporter well, not exactly. Just because she could, lindsay stayed late and decided to try to lift again. A weight more than she had ever lifted before. Loaded up, she told her spotter, and then she pulled. And it rose. 85 pounds with one hand. And a personal record. I just didnt want to leave until i did that. And you did . And i did. Reporter because thats lindsay ess, taking her world in hand and taking it to the max. For nightline, im john donvan in richmond, virginia. Up next, what some parts of america missed tonight. We have what you need. Viagra single packs. So guys with ed can. Take viagra when they need it. Ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex. Do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension. 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