Sunday, Sept. 23, 2007 | 7:30 a.m.
Manish Desai walked into the exhibit hall looking for a new left arm. His had been amputated because of cancer, and visiting the Sands Convention Center on Thursday was like walking into a super store for prosthetics and their accessories.
There was the electronic wrist attachment that, with a flick of a muscle, buzzed and whirled in circles . There were limbs that could be bound to the body with straps and manipulated with wires. And blush-toned cosmetic covers - silicone skin substitutes, some with fake hair attached.
A triple amputee - with two prosthetic legs and an arm - walked past. Several display booths were staffed by people whose missing limbs had spun them into careers in an industry that's growing because of the war s in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Desai and his wife, Emily, are two of my best friends, and his cancer diagnosis in April had sent us all reeling. Doctors said it was a rare, grave and fast-spreading cancer and expressed surprise that he wasn't dead already. His best chance of survival, they said, was to amputate his left hand, where the tumor was taking over.
Desai was left - handed, and as an architect his career depended on precision and fine motor skills. But at 31, with a happy marriage and a toddler son, his future loom ed large. He calls the decision to remove the hand a "no brainer."
In June they cut off the arm about five inches below the elbow.
"The bad news is , you don't want to lose your arm," Desai said. "The good news is , the technology you have allows you to do so many things."
So the Los Angeles couple came to Las Vegas, where they had an appointment at the American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association industry convention to pick up a loaner hand for his prosthetist back home to examine.
Desai had done his research and settled on the i-Limb, a robotic hand made by Scotland-based Touch Bionics that is creating buzz in the industry. Other prosthetic hands appear as hooks or claws, with three prongs that open and close to grasp objects, but the i-Limb looks human, with four fingers and a thumb and five motors operated by a computer processor in the palm.
It's the only hand on the market that has both a movable thumb and the ability to sense pressure to conform around objects, according to Touch Bionics CEO Stuart Mead.
Like other prosthetics, the i-Limb is a myoelectric device, meaning the amputee manipulates the battery powered hand by twitching muscles in his stump. The muscle movements are detected by two small electrode plates and translated by software into particular actions.
Desai had not experienced a myoelectric hand until Thursday. Before the i-Limb appointment, he browsed other models, such as the Utah Arm, made by Utah-based Motion Control.
The company president, Harold Sears, surprised Desai by inviting him to try a table-mounted model, and didn't waste a second in clamping sensors on Desai's stump. Wires connected it to a prosthetic hand on a display a few feet away.
Desai focused his eyes, twitched his forearm this way and that, and soon he could easily open, close and rotate the hand - despite its distance .
"That was pretty cool," Desai said, his eyes bright. "I was able to control that pretty quick!"
Sears and Desai lamented that insurance companies don't like to pay for the latest prosthetic advances. The i-Limb package - the hand, the fittings, accessories, installation and training - can cost upwards of $40,000 . Replacements, fittings and accessories will cost thousands of dollars more a year. The couple plan to raise money privately and battle insurance to cover the costs.
At the Texas Assistive Devices booth Desai talked to Ron Farquharson, who started the company after losing his arm in an industrial accident. The company makes hair brushes, spatulas, wood chisels, fishing poles and other accessories that plug in at the wrist.
"You're not going to be able to do everything you used to do, but it's going to take a lot of the frustration out of it," Farquharson said of his products.
"If I could butter a piece of toast I'd be a happy man," Desai replied.
Or cut a steak, Farquharson suggested. Yeah, that'd be nice, Desai agreed.
At the Touch Bionics booth, the couple met another customer, Jeff Van Hulle, a 47-year-old San Francisco economist who was born without a hand. He was drawn to Las Vegas to try out the i-Limb, and was mesmerized.
He had been testing the device for two hours, tossing a ball back and forth between hands until the battery died.
"It's wonderful," he said. "It's leaps and bounds above other hands. Each different finger is moving."
As Desai quizzed the Touch Bionics CEO about the industry's fanciest hand, Emily stood in the background.
"This is the new hand that everybody is talking about," Emily said. "This has been the thing he looks at and says, 'It's OK.' Not that it's going to cure cancer, but this is what gets him excited about moving forward."
The i-Limb was introduced six weeks ago and only 30 have been sold in the United States. Manish and Emily say they love the idea of being on the cutting edge, advancing prosthetics for future generations of amputees.
Mead says people buying prosthetics need to be certain they're buying a product that suits their needs.
"It's like cars," he said, holding up the i-Limb. "You wouldn't take a Ferrari on the farm, and you wouldn't use this in a steel mill."
Desai is now undergoing chemotherapy treatments, and there is a chance his cancer could return. If it does, it will be more difficult to treat, doctors have said. Desai, a Christian, said since he was diagnosed with cancer he's prayed that God would give him "wholeness and restoration."
"Getting this limb is part of that wholeness and restoration," he said.
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