Baltimore boy becomes 1st to receive new hands

Zion Harvey just wanted to swing from the monkey bars.

That's what the Baltimore youngster told his doctor when asked why he wanted hands. Sometimes in an 8-year-old's simplicity is profundity.

Earlier this month, Zion took a big -- nay, massive -- step toward that long-awaited jaunt on the jungle gym when he became the first child to receive a double hand transplant.

"When I was 2, I had to get my hands cut off because I was sick," Zion succinctly put it, in a video taken last year.

Actually, he downplayed it, as is indicative of his disarming optimism. At 2, Zion suffered a life-threatening sepsis infection, resulting in the failure of multiple organs and necessitating the amputation of his hands and feet.

At age 4, after two years of dialysis, he received a kidney from his mother, Pattie Ray, and despite an early lifetime of hardship, Zion figured out not only how to get by, but how to do it with the widest of grins across his face. CNN