Hi I'm Mike Demery. This is my hand. It's going to be my best friend. We're going todo a lot of things together—fish, I love hunting, probably try to lift weights one day, but right now we're in the process of getting me acquainted with my hand.
It's been 16 years [since my amputation] in 2003.
You never want to lose any of your particular parts, whether it's a hand or a foot, or any part of your body. It's pretty reckless. Until you do that, you don't understand how important one is to the other, until you lose it.
[The prosthetist] knows his job, and we've got a pretty good relationship. He's going to show me how to do different things with this [prosthesis]. This is a new one. It's different from my past prosthesis, and hopefully once I get pretty familiar with it, we'll do a lot of good things with it.
[My biggest accomplishment since my amputation] is really just getting to this point now, where I'll have another hand. This is going to be my hand. That's how I see it.
It's hard to say about accomplishments. You just take it one day at a time, really.That's what I would tell anybody: just take it a day at a time and be thankful.
Don't ever lose—if you can—never lose a part of your body. Hopefully you won't get in a situation like I did. I was in an accident.
They tried to save it, but it was killing me to keep because I tore my forearm up pretty good.
I've come a long way. I was left-handed unfortunately. I have to learn how to write again. I still throw a ball like a girl with my right hand.
There's still a lot of things that I can't do with my right hand that I have to do with my left hand, but I've come a long way with this. So, this [new hand] is going to be my crowning glory, man.
