First hand transplant man gives his wife the elbow .. for his nurse

By Rachel Ellis, sundaymirror.co.uk 13/04/2008

EXCLUSIVE DOCS SEWED ON A NEW LIMB..BUT HE HATED IT SO MUCH HE HAD IT CUT OFF

The world's first hand transplant patient has left his wife and children... for the nurse who helped him through the operation.

Clint Hallam fell for Martine Szmytkowski while she helped him recover from the groundbreaking surgery.

Now he tells for the first time how he walked out on his family - and how the op nearly wrecked his life, even though it was a medical success.

"Marti is the only good thing the surgeons gave me," says Clint. "Apart from her, I gained nothing. I had a good lifestyle, a good family, and I lost it all overnight because of wanting a hand."

Clint, 57, made medical history when he had the hand of a dead motorcyclist grafted on to his right arm after his own was severed in a horrific accident.

But three years later he had the hand removed after his body rejected it.

By then he was living with Martine in France. He first met her two days after the transplant in 1998 at the world-leading Edouard-Herriot hospital in Lyon, France. She had come to remove his bandages.

Fluent in English as well as her native French, Martine was assigned to help Clint, a New Zealander, communicate with the rest of the staff.

'Marti became my liaison," he says. "I saw her almost every day. She became an important link - to the doctors and to what was actually happening.

"She had this redtinted hair and pixie face and I thought 'this is nice'. But it never occurred to me I was going to get into a relationship with her."

It was only after he left France three months later that things started to become serious.

Back in his adopted home of Australia with his wife of 12 years and their children, all he could think about was returning to Lyon and seeing Martine again.

"My family's life was continuing as normal but mine went into limbo and that really got me depressed," he says. "Life had changed, I had changed."

Clint decided to ask Martine, 46, to join him on a holiday to the US five months after the operation. She agreed and a year later, after Clint "ran away from home", they were living together.

The couple are planning to marry and have now started a family - although, because Clint had had an irreversible vasectomy after the birth of his last child, they decided to adopt a little girl from a Vietnamese orphanage, Nhan, who is now two. "We'd travelled to that part of the world and we liked the fact the Vietnamese are very relaxed but also very strong because they have had so many problems thrown at them," he says.

"Adopting Nhan was a long process. We finally took her back to France when she was seven and a half months old.

"It feels wonderful to have Marti and Nhan. Marti has an amazing amount of patience and understands me even when I say nothing. We plan to get married in December in Las Vegas or the Caribbean."

Despite his new-found happiness, 10 years on Clint is still bitter about the transplant.

The operation was controversial from the start, after it was discovered that Clint had lost his hand in a sawmill accident while serving a jail sentence in New Zealand for fraud.

The surgeon who carried out the operation was Jean-Michel Dubernard - who has since completed the world's first face transplant. He was able to transplant the hand by attaching all the arteries, veins, muscles and tendons in Clint's arm. After the 13-hour operation Clint recovered feeling in the hand and could move it enough to carry out simple tasks like holding a cup of coffee.

But ultimately the procedure was unsuccessful after the hand turned out to be a poor match for his body.

"The donor hand was bigger than my hand, bald and pink - and my skin is olivetoned and with hair. It didn't match. The join was proud and not a trim fit," he says.

"As soon as I saw it I didn't like it but what could I say? These surgeons had given me the chance of a lifetime to have a new hand.

"I should have expressed my feelings but I just thought be quiet and it will go away. I was naive."

After Clint stopped taking drugs needed to stop his body rejecting the hand - "I couldn't afford the medication" - the hand soon began to wither and he had it removed in 2001.

Work dried up after people found out about his convictions and he had to eke out a living cleaning windows. He now works as a truck driver.

Although he admits the aftermath of the operation left him low, Clint says: "I came out the other side and my priority is my family now. I don't spend all the time thinking about the transplant any more."

1983: Clint Hallam sentenced to two years in a New Zealand jail for fraud.

1984: Severs right hand in a sawmill accident. It was sewn back on but never took.

1989: Has hand amputated.

1995: Told he qualifies for hand transplant. Approaches team in US and starts tests.

1998: Has world's first hand transplant in France. Returns to family in Australia.

1999: Gets together with French nurse Martine in Lyon.

2001: Hand removed at St Mary's Hospital, London.

2006: Clint and Martine adopt Vietnamese orphan Nhan.

'The hand was pink & bald..my skin's olive and hairy'

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