The New Zealander who made global headlines as the world's first hand transplant patient says a nurse who helped him through it is the only good thing he got out of it.
Clint Hallam fell for Martine Szmytkowski while convalescing - and subsequently left his wife and children,
who were living in Australia.
Now he has told British newspaper the Sunday Mirror how he walked out on his family - and how the operation nearly wrecked his life, even though it was a medical success.
"Apart from (Marti), I gained nothing. I had a good lifestyle, a good family, and I lost it all overnight because of wanting a hand."
Mr Hallam, 57, made medical history when he had the hand of a brain-dead French motorcyclist grafted onto his right arm.
He made headlines in 1998 surgeon Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard - who has since completed the world's first face transplant on another patient - stitched on the hand.
His own hand was severed by a chainsaw in an accident in 1984 while he was serving a jail term for fraud.
It was sewn back on but five years later he had it amputated again, saying it was not functioning well.
He hit the news again in February 2001 when he asked for the hand to be amputated.
By then, he had left his wife and children in Australia and was living in France with Ms Szmytkowski, who he first met when she changed his bandages two days after the transplant.
After the transplant, Mr Hallam left his wife of 12 years and their children to live with Ms Szmytkowski.
In 2006 the couple adopted a little girl, Nhan, from a Vietnamese orphanage. The girl is now aged two. The couple plan to get married in December.
But Mr Hallam is still bitter about the transplant.
P rof Dubernard attached all the arteries, veins, muscles and tendons during a 13-hour operation so that Mr Hallam recovered feeling and could move the hand to carry out simple tasks such as holding a cup of coffee.
But the hand was bigger and a different colour. Mr Hallam stopped taking drugs needed to stop his body rejecting it.
When the hand began to wither, he had it removed.
- NZPA
