**Words and pictures: Cynthia Vice Acosta LLC.
Making medical history also made Alba Lucia Cardona the happiest woman in the world**
Every time Alba Lucia Cardona, 49, picks up a knife and fork or puts on some lipstick, she sends out a small prayer of thanks to a woman she’s never met. Alba, who works as a nurse, is the first woman in the world to receive a double hand transplant.
After losing her hands when she was 19 in a classroom chemistry accident, Alba lived a life of misery until she received the transplants at the age of 47.
She had immigrated to Spain from her native Colombia “for a better life” and there saw a television program about a Dr Cavadas’ successful surgery to reattach a severed arm on a Spanish fisherman. She wrote to him begging for help.
Two-and-a-half years later, the day came that would change her life for ever.
“Dr Cavadas called me to say a suitable donor had been found. I had just over an hour to get to hospital.”
At 10pm that night, after an 11-hour operation, Alba made medical history.
“When I woke up and first saw my new hands, I couldn’t believe how beautiful they were,” remembers Alba. “They looked like the hands of a pianist and I just kept thanking the nurses over and over as they changed my bandages.”
For the full story, see this week’s Woman’s Day (on sale January 19).
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