Doctors said it will take six to nine months for Mangino to regain sensory function in his hands, but days after surgery he began independently moving his fingers. Forty surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologists, residents, radiologists and physician assistants attached the left and right forearms and hands from an anonymous donor below Mangino’s elbows, including bones, skin, tendons, muscles, ligaments, and blood vessels. "I won't have to perform a miracle anymore to just get up in the morning," he said. “I just want arms to be able to change my clothes without having to think how I am going to put them on, everyday,’’ he said. He said Mangino's surgery was only the fourth bilateral hand transplant in the U.S. 
 
 Mangino's procedure was the second bilateral hand transplant by surgeons at Brigham and Women's, which has performed four face transplants. In May, a Connecticut woman who was mauled by a chimpanzee received a new face and two hands at the hospital, but the hand transplant failed after Charla Nash developed pneumonia and other complications after surgery. Double hand transplant recipient Richard Mangino, 65, of Revere, Mass., bottom, smiles as he is patted on the shoulder by Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, director of plastic surgery transplantation at Brigham Women's... (Associated Press) 
 
 Double hand transplant recipient Richard Mangino, 65, of Revere, Mass., bottom, smiles as he is patted on the shoulder by Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, director of plastic surgery transplantation at Brigham Women's... (Associated Press) 
 
 Richard Mangino, 65, of Revere, lost his arms below the elbows and his legs below the knees after he had a kidney stone in 2002 and contracted a severe bloodstream infection. The former director of the ground crew for United Airlines at Boston's Logan airport, Mangino taught himself to do daily activities with his prostheses, mowing the lawn, shoveling snow and painting.
– Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital is renowned for face transplants, but it can do miracles with hands, too: A 65-year-old who lost his lower arms to a blood infection got a new set in a successful double-transplant, reports the Boston Globe. “It’s just like you can fly,” says patient Richard Mangino, who also lost his lower legs. “It’s like a bird that got its wings back.” A 40-person surgical team gave Mangino left and right forearms and hands from an anonymous donor, though it will take months of rehab for him to master them, notes AP. The hospital is the same one that performed a face transplant on chimpanzee-attack victim Charla Nash. Doctors also tried to give her new hands, but they had to be removed when her body rejected them.