The first man in the UK to receive a hand transplant used it to save his wife’s life by performing CPR

The UK’s first hand transplant patient has told how he saved his wife’s life by performing CPR after she went into cardiac arrest.

Ten years after Mark Cahill, 61, underwent surgery at Leeds General Infirmary, the former pub landlord has revealed how it changed his life.

“It’s just like my own hand. I know it’s someone else’s hand, but I consider it a part of me,’ he said.

And six years after the operation, Mr Cahill used his new arm to revive his wife Sylvia, keeping her alive for 10 minutes after she went into cardiac arrest before paramedics arrived.

He said: ‘He is fit and well today. It was using my transplanted arm. So he also saved someone’s life, it was fantastic.’

Mr Cahill understands how difficult it must be for families faced with a specialist nurse asking for a donation so soon after a tragic event in their lives.

‘It must be a terrible decision for them. You can see the hand, while you cannot see the other organs.

‘I am so delighted for the families who agreed to it. And I’m very pleased that I got it, that someone did it for me.’

He said: ‘It’s a sad thing, but they gave me that new arm for 10 years.’

By sharing his experience, Mr Cahill was able to help Corinna Hutton prepare for her own double arm transplant.

Ms Hutton lost both her arms and legs to sepsis in 2013 and feared the procedure after being warned it could take ‘months’ to accept her new hands as her own.

‘He was able to tell me what it was really like to live with it,’ she said. ‘I needed it so much. I was not attentive and careful.’

‘It changed my life incredibly. I am so grateful. Being able to touch my son’s hair, touch his skin, feel the warmth, things like that. It will amaze you. You take that for granted so easily.’

She said the first few months after the transplant were very difficult, but the breakthrough came after about five months when she went to Glastonbury and ‘came back as me’.

‘It’s been steadily improving since then,’ she said. ‘Even now, four years later, every week I have to do something new or something that defeats me.’

‘As soon as I woke up, they were mine. They were mine immediately. They looked like mine, they felt like mine, they were mine.

‘Then I immediately felt guilty, thinking that someone had just died and given me their hands. I never want to forget it. Whenever I celebrate my hands, I think about how the other family is coping.’

Unlike Mr Cahill, Ms Hutton met her donor’s family.

She said: ‘I can see her and feel her and touch her with my hands. You just get excited, don’t you?’

Chris King, 63, from Rossington, near Doncaster, received a double hand transplant in 2016 after losing all but his thumb in a horrific work accident.

“It’s been a strangely wonderful journey,” Mr King said. ‘Life is back to good.’

Mr King said that while he never thinks about his hands coming from someone else, he regularly thinks about the donor.

»I wonder what he was like. Was he a family guy? Did he have a daughter or a son?’ He said. ‘Was he a biker, because I like motorbikes?’

He said he struggled while writing a letter of thanks to the donor’s family, whom he had not met. And shortly after the operation, he said that he spent the whole day crying for the deceased person and his family.

‘I cried and thought about the donor – what was he like? And I guess they cried a lot themselves.’

Mr King said it hadn’t been an easy journey since 2016, but he wouldn’t think twice about doing it again.

He said he was amazed to see how fast his nails grew. And he said he knew he had accepted his new hands when he bit his nails – something he hasn’t done since, on doctor’s advice.