PARIS - To the dismay of his doctors, New Zealander Clint Hallam, who last year underwent a rare hand transplant, has broken contact with them and risks losing his new limb unless he seeks urgent medical attention.
"I really didn't expect something like this to happen," Dr Jean-Michel Dubernard of the
transplant team said yesterday.
He said Mr Hallam was a difficult man "but he's a big boy now and it's up to him to follow physiotherapy."
Dr Dubernard attributed Mr Hallam's disappearance to a "psychological reaction after being surrounded by doctors for three months."
But he said it could also be because of problems in Australia, where Mr Hallam faces fraud-related charges from a marketing investment scam allegedly worth $NZ1.16 million.
Mr Hallam, aged 48, received a new forearm and hand in September after 13 hours of surgery at the Edouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon, south-eastern France. He left France in January.
"He said 10 days ago that his skin has turned red in parts - and that could be a sign of rejection," said Dr Dubernard, who has sporadically received e-mails and faxes from Mr Hallam.
Mr Hallam told CBS News in New York that he went to the United States from France and no longer underwent therapy or essential skin biopsies and blood tests.
He had probably lost "40 per cent of the movement that I had in France."
But he did not acknowledge any fault and said: "They [the doctors] tend to forget ... that I know my body better than they do."
CBS said Mr Hallam maintained that all hint of rejection had disappeared and that he had been seeing doctors. CBS said he refused to name them.
"I'm not about to lose my hand. I'm not about to throw a dream away."
CBS said Mr Hallam returned to Las Vegas, where he has been staying, after the interview.
At the time of the operation, doctors said Hallam would need to continue physiotherapy for at least a year but that it could be as long as 18 months before it was known if the hand had been successfully transplanted.
Mr Hallam was serving a two-year sentence for fraud in New Zealand when he lost his hand in a sawing accident in prison in 1984.
For five years, doctors tried to fully reattach his hand. But Mr Hallam gave up and had doctors amputate at the upper forearm - AP
Pictured: Clint Hallam.
