Jeff Swedarsky had it all: A beautiful wife, a听growing business听and a child on the way. But last summer, a tragic accident left him without his left arm. Recently, a team of doctors at Johns Hopkins completed an arm transplant, and now听Swedarsky is on the road to recovery. (Courtesy听Jeff Swedarsky)
听 (Jeff Swedarsky )
WASHINGTON 鈥� To Jeff Swedarsky, the simple act of holding his infant son is a miracle worth fighting for.
Last June, the 34-year-old food tour operator, athlete and musician from Alexandria, Virginia, lost his left arm in a tragic accident. One year later, he got a new one.
The life-changing loss came without warning on a balmy summer evening in the nation’s capital. Along with his wife and two friends, Swedarsky headed out to a jazz concert, but stopped along the way to check out a wedding venue for the newly engaged couple.
Swedarsky was standing at the top of a long, spiral staircase 鈥斕� perfect, he remembers, for a bridal entrance 鈥� when听for some unexplained reason, he fell.
“Straight down the stairwell, almost 40 feet,”听Swedarsky听recalls. And it all happened in the blink of an eye.
His听back was against the stairs, and without thinking, he grabbed a banister during the fall to try to right himself. The force was so great, it tore off his left arm.
“I lost my arm, but at the same time it saved my life,” Swedarsky says.
He landed on his feet and blacked out. When he regained consciousness at the bottom of the staircase, he looked up at his wife and friend as they tried to stop the bleeding听and听said,听“I need my arm.”
A trauma team at a nearby hospital听tried to reattach the severed limb, but the damage was too great. Swedarsky went into an emotional downward spiral that lasted for weeks.
However, his spirit and determination to overcome the loss took hold when he connected with a man he calls “Jaimie.”
Dr. Jaimie Shores听is a plastic surgeon听and clinical director of the . Prior to Swedarsky鈥檚 case, only two听arm transplants had been performed in the听United States, and no听one had ever听transplanted an arm so close to the shoulder, where Swedarsky鈥檚 arm detached from his body.
All the same, the team at Johns Hopkins was willing to give it a try.
Shores warned Swedarsky that it might take years to find a donor arm. Instead, it took a few months, and the surgery was performed on June 17, 2015 鈥� almost one year to the day听after Swedarsky lost his limb.
“Jeff got lucky听getting it that quickly,” Shores says. Once the team found a听deceased donor of similar size, age and skin tone to Swedarsky, there was no time to waste.
Two surgical teams were involved 鈥� one to remove the arm from the cadaver and one to听tackle the delicate task of attaching it听to Swedarsky,听layer by layer, from bone to skin.
It is a time-consuming operation (the surgery took 11 hours), and yet, time is of the essence.
“Every moment that is going by that there is not blood flow to that transplanted arm, we are worried about tissue death,” Shores says.
He adds that the听most exciting and relief-producing moment of the surgery comes when blood听starts to move again through听the arteries and veins of the transplanted arm.
“You can see the hand going from white to being pink, and you see that pink demarcation of life versus no life kind of just marching out at the end of the hand,” Shores says.
And while a successful operation takes planning and precise execution from the听transplant team, Shores emphasizes that the key is to select the right patient 鈥� someone with the motivation, dynamism and support network to see it through. Someone like Jeff Swedarsky.
“Jeff is the kind of guy who lost an arm and said, 鈥楬ow am I going to push forward now, what are the options available, what are the solutions,鈥欌�� Shores says.
Rehab is now Swedarsky鈥檚 full-time job. It is a long, difficult haul because while the bones, arteries, muscles and skin could be connected during surgery, the nerves from his shoulder down to the fingertips of his new arm have to regenerate, and this happens at an excruciatingly slow pace of about 1 inch per month.
“It just takes a second for you to lose something like your arm, and it takes a lifetime for it to come back,” says Swedarsky after a session of physical therapy.
He knows the journey ahead is a long one, but he is undaunted. In the beginning, he told his doctors he would go further than any transplant recipient had ever gone before.
Swedarsky has many reasons to persevere and even to smile. His wife Sharon听was pregnant at the time of the accident, and their son Ari was born six months later.
“He won’t have a clue that I had to work so hard just to be able to play a little catch with him or teach him a little music,”听says the new dad about his plans for the future.
Shores says it will be a tough road for Swedarsky, but if anyone can make听a transplanted arm fully his own, Jeff can.
“The more lofty the goal, the higher you are going to reach,鈥� Shores says.
