 Functionally, leg transplant surgery may be able to ride a patient with new legs after extensive rehabilitation, allow him or her or them to perform daily activities without assistance. Furthermore, the ability to restore a near-normal aesthetic appearance of the legs may lead to tremendous psychological benefits. What sci-fi movie are we living in? Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, talented internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today on Footless Joe. I'm Joe, and if you didn't know, I am missing a foot, hence the channel name. Today we're going to talk about something that is honestly continually blowing my mind, every new article I read about it, or every time someone brings it up. I don't know where I am. I don't know what decade it is. I don't know what sci-fi movie I'm living in, but it's definitely one of them. We're going to talk today about leg transplant surgeries. As in, no more carbon fiber, no more cool metal pieces. We're talking about real flesh, baby, on the end of this. That is realistically an option in the future and is happening right now. Now, over the course of having this channel, I have had a few people reach out to me and ask that if leg transplant surgery was a possibility, would I do it? And I have it on my to-do video list to make that video at one point. Like, yeah, if leg transplant surgery was ever realistically available and was a good option in the future, would I consider it? I was going to do a whole video theorizing about that. And then my friend, Amy Party, who is an incredible human being, posted on Instagram. She's going through issues with her leg. She's a double baloney amputee. Post it on Instagram that she's being considered for a clinical trial of leg transplants. I... I... What? So let's talk a little bit about what they're doing and if I would ever consider it. As we dive in today, if you could do me a favor. If you would consider, you don't have to do it, but if you would consider hitting that subscribe button as we are very close to 150,000 subscribers, that would make my day. I would really appreciate it. And if you want to give this video a thumbs up, that would be extra awesome. Let's start off by reading what Amy wrote and how all of this came to my attention. My husband sent me her post, I was like, have you read this? And I read it. And then my brain exploded. And then a couple other people in my audience sent this article to me as well. So let's check out her post. Amy, we can give you new legs again are words I never thought in a million years I would hear. And yet those are the words I heard today. I'm in Boston this week meeting with a world-class medical team regarding neck surgery on my leg. An amazing clinical trial is going on regarding limb revisions. And I'm going through medical testing to see if I'm a candidate for it. They're taking x-rays, MRIs and although I'm here for a separate clinical trial, I happen to randomly fit the criteria for a lower leg transplant. She goes on to say there's a lot more to this conversation than just this. There are major risks. I love my current legs. However, apparently I'm a needle in a haystack when it comes to the ideal candidate for the surgery. Just crazy to hear it even as an option. Now she went on the next day to clarify that she doesn't hate her prosthetic legs or anything like that. I'm going to put the links to both the posts down below. It's just really cool to have this as an option. I think it's not anything she ever thought would be an option. So after this, one of you sent me an article over on Instagram about the actual leg transplantation surgery and what's happening down there. Now this article is from Brigham and Women's Hospital. I have no idea if that's where she is or not. This may be related. This may be unrelated. But it's happening either way. Leg transplantation surgery is similar to both face and hand transplantation. Didn't know that was happening. In that the transplanted tissue is a composite of various tissues such as skin, tendons, muscles, ligaments, bones, and blood vessels. Real leg reconstruction methods are always considered first, but they may provide less than optimal results for certain patients. There are many sophisticated prosthesis that satisfactory replace the basic function of a lower extremity. I think that's a good way of pointing it. It's very satisfactory. Like it works. But it's not a real leg, right? It's not a meat leg. I know that many of you love it when I say that. I think it's funny. That's what it is though. Like it's, you know, it's meat. It's a meaty leg. This, on the other hand, would not be delicious. However, replacing lower extremities in part or whole with prosthetics remains suboptimal in that prosthetics do not provide sensation and are not natural peering substitutes for missing limbs. Are you telling me that you can tell this isn't a real leg? Dang. So let's go into the benefits and risks of a transplantation surgery. So obviously my biggest question coming into this is how functional do transplanted legs become? Like what's the best result someone's had with a leg transplantation surgery? I still can't believe that I'm saying that sentence. Like can you actually walk without assistance? Could you go for a jog? Does the transplantation ever get rejected or fail? Or this is just, this is so cool to me. And then we're going to go into what I actually feel about it as someone who is less than two years out from a leg amputation. A couple benefits, improved functionality, leg transplant surgery can restore the physical functionality of the legs, including tactile sensation, what, and the possibility to walk independently. Restoration of appearance. Leg transplant restores a near normal appearance to the patient's lower extremity which can help patients regain the confidence to return to their formal lifestyles, including jobs and social activities. Risks. Rejection. Okay, so that one makes perfect sense that your body could reject the transplanted limb and it wouldn't work. Increased pain and discomfort. Okay. When compared to the alternatives, doing nothing or using a prosthesis, the patient undergoing leg transplantation will experience more post-operative pain and discomfort. Patients will likely experience a 10-day hospital stay. Let's just think about this for a second. If you could have a leg sewn onto them, grafted on, and stay in the hospital for 10 days, as many fingers as I presently have, tell me that that isn't some sci-fi stuff. Like what? What? What? You are actively seeing my brain explode right now. Another risk. Psychological issues as the legs are used continuously during the day. There is a concern that the patient may have difficulty adjusting to new limbs. The patient may also feel anxiety when dealing with the reactions of friends and families to the physical change. I think that's a good thing to point out because that's very real. The psychological components of any kind of major surgery are really important to consider. Functionality issues. It is possible after leg transplantation that the patient will experience persistent difficulty in leg motion limiting the functionality of the transplant in legs. Okay. I'm really curious if this has ever been done successfully. My phone auto-corrected to lung transplant. No. No, Siri. I'm talking about real legs. Oh, the first article that comes up. First double leg transplant patient has legs amputated bummer. This is back in 2013. Medical science moves very quickly. So I'm not finding any leg transplant videos. Here's an arm transplant after video. Let's check this out. Gabriella has become the first person in Latin America to have a double arm transplant. Whoa. The 17 hour operation is far from the most grueling part of this story though. Oh my God. Look at that. You can see like the tendons moving on both sides of the transplantation or the transplant. I'm not sure the proper wording there. Oh my Lord. It seems like there's a lot more information regarding hand or arm transplant surgeries than leg transplant. I guess that makes sense considering that it's been around longer and the leg transplant is in a clinical trial right now. We live in a crazy, crazy, crazy time. I can't believe that this is actually a possibility. So presently, I am unable to find any pictures of leg transplants. If you find any, feel free to send them my way. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough here on my phone. But what they can do with arms and hands is mind blowing. It's so incredible. So the question that a lot of people have asked me over the last year and a half is if a leg transplant surgery was available to me, would I do it? Would I choose it? If someone asked me, someone donated a leg to me just out of the goodness of their heart, just gave me a leg. Which by the way, don't do that. Please don't do that. If I would accept it. And that was kind of the video that I wanted to do so I wanted to talk a little bit about that considering that in the next 10 years this might realistically be a possibility. We'll see how things go. So if you don't know much about my life or my story, I am a baloney amputee. I've been this way since October 2018 when I chose to have this amputation. The reason for that is because I broke my ankle when I was 13. I had many, many, many surgeries and by the time I was 27, I was in a lot of pain, couldn't really do much of anything and I decided I didn't want to live life like that anymore and the best option that I had was to have an amputation and move on with life. And of course it's not been easy but it has definitely been worth it. It's something that I do not at all regret. I'm very glad I made this decision. I'm finally getting to the place where I can like hop on my bike in the morning and I can go for walks with my husband and I'm getting more active and it's awesome. But what if, what if I had waited five years and I could have had a leg transplant? So let's talk about this. Let's talk about the realistic possibility of getting a leg transplant. First of all, would I do that? Second of all, would I have waited if I knew that that was a possibility? Let me first start off by saying that I knew that in theory that was a possibility. I sort of always figured that somewhere someone was messing around or testing or trying to replace legs. I assumed that within my lifetime I would see leg transplants, though it is still blowing my mind to realize that that's kind of a possibility in the near future. So with that being the case, I can tell you with 100% certainty that I would not have done anything differently. A lot of people asked me again towards like the beginning of my channel, would I, would I regret it if it came out in like a year that the issues I was having could be fixed by some kind of miracle new surgery? And my answer is honestly that I wouldn't have done anything differently because that was all theoretical. Anything new and crazy and cool that, you know, could fix everything in theory. And in theory is often a lot easier than in reality. But the whole conversation of new things coming down the line that could fix the issues that I was having or replacing it, I was waiting for that for years anyways. That's the thing. My ankle was not okay for a very long time and I was hoping and I was, I was praying and I was hoping that something would come along that would make everything better. And I tried a number of things. I tried a number of cutting edge sort of injections and things of that nature. And they didn't work for me. They work for other people, which is fantastic. But given this information, given this new information, I can tell you this is still 100% what I would have done. The reason for that is because I wanted a realistic, tested shot. And here's the other thing, while watching this video, I'm sure there will be some people who are like, you didn't look into this. You didn't look into leg transplantation surgery before your amputation. Like, shouldn't you look into every possible option? And yes, I do think you should look into every possible option. At that point in my life, with the pain that I was in, with the position I was in, I wasn't willing to do something that was so, so much of an experiment. I knew that. I knew that I was looking for something that was still going to be a huge risk but was a little bit more tested, was a little bit more understood. And so that's what I did. I didn't look into clinical trials and on the fringe sort of options because that's not what I was looking for. I was looking for something that had already been to market, if you want to call it that, and had been tested out some. When we're talking about the risk of rejection, like my body rejecting the leg transplant and the additional health, very real health risks that come with that and the increased healing times and all of the question marks and all the unknowns. Because it wasn't a necessity for me, because amputation was a good option for my situation, it wasn't something that I was particularly forced to consider or forced to look into. I think it's amazing. I think it's so cool that it's becoming an option to people, that they're testing this, that it could actually work. Like that's mind blowing and that's so cool. But I can tell you that after a decade and a half now of undergoing surgeries and trying things and trying new things that at least at this point in my life, I just want something that works. I want something that the variables are fairly well known for. Presseptics don't work for everybody but I took an educated guess. I took an educated risk based on the information I had that it would probably work for me. And thus far they are. Now that is not to say however that this isn't something I would consider in the future. I have no idea if it ever realistically became an option available to the public, maybe I would. The thing is I have a situation right now that works pretty well. Would I rather have a fully functioning meat foot? Absolutely. But there are gonna be risks that come with transplantation that frighten me. Saying this, I'm not sure if that sounds bad. Like if I should be more adventurous to try new things and to enter trials and things of that nature but I can tell you that for me personally, I don't have a motivation towards that. At this point in my life, I like the options that I'm working with, they work well enough that there isn't significant motivation for me to try something else. I think it's amazing that people are willing to do this based on their situations. I think that's so cool. But for my life, for my body, for my own skin, doing something that is so cutting edge, that is so new and that there are a lot of variables that are unknown yet, I would rather wait in that situation. There are a lot of situations in which I'll take a risk, I'll be the first person but this is not one of those for me. All of that to answer the question of no, I don't think I would get a leg transplant surgery if it was available to me today. It's so cool that it exists. It's absolutely amazing that this is starting to become a reality. It's starting to actually work for people that blows my mind. I have no idea what Amy's gonna decide to do. She's an incredible human being. Please go check out her Instagram. I've linked it down below. I've had a couple brief conversations with her. She is delightful and is a personal hero of mine, especially when it comes to the world of amputase. If you were facing an amputation or the possibility of a transplant, would you consider a transplant, an arm transplant, a hand transplant, a leg one? This is so weird that this is actually a conversation that we get to have. I wonder if that takes care of like phantom pain and things like that. It probably does because your nerves have something that they're actually firing to that they're actually interacting with. That's really crazy. It is a crazy, crazy awesome world that we live in right now. Thank you guys so much for listening. I truly appreciate it. Thank you to my patrons over on Patreon for making these videos a reality, for making them financially possible. If you're interested in financially supporting this channel, check out the link on screen or down below. There are a number of perks that come along with being a part of my Patreon family, like behind the scenes videos and early access to some videos and bloopers videos when I get around to editing them and hand science pieces, prints of my artwork. So that's something you're interested in. Check it out, I would appreciate it. But to you watching this video, thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your day to spend them here with me, learning about some crazy new science. I will definitely be keeping up on these stories. It honestly makes me really excited to read about stuff like this. So thank you for hanging out with me. You could be anyone in the world doing anything you chose to spend a few minutes out of your day here with me. And that means a lot to me. Thank you. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys.