Aimee Copeland Gets "Bionic" Hands

The latest evolution of Aimee Copeland, suffering the effects of flesh-eating bacteria, includes a new pair of "bionic" hands.

The Georgia woman, with Upstate roots, recently received the appendages after a procedure in Ohio, giving her a pair of hands with 24 programmable functions to improve her dexterity and aid in her continuing rehabilitation, said her father. 

Aimee's father, Andy Copeland, a Spartanburg native and USC graduate, told the Associated Press: "All four days she sent us videos of things she could do. The second day she was moving water between cups. On the third day she was cutting a cucumber. On the fourth day she was doing more typical things, like applying makeup to her face and more personal things."

A quick recap: Copeland, 25, in 2012, lost all of her left leg, her right foot, and both hands. The limbs were amputated after Copeland contracted necrotizing fasciitis, a disease caused by a flesh-eating bacterium that entered a wound on Copeland's leg following a zipline accident and a fall into a creek while on vacation. 

Her ordeal, and the aftermath, have been widely reported by Patch and other national media.

Click here for previous Patch coverage of Aimee Copeland. 

Mr. Copeland said the hands were given to Aimee in exchange for her serving as a Touch Bionics ambassador, the AP report said. He said Aimee is likely to begin looking for a prosthetic leg with a computer-controlled knee joint to allow for more natural movement than a mechanical one.

"I just really look forward to her regaining her confidence about certain things she's been unable to do," Copeland told the AP. "Really, I just want to see her enjoying life the way that she should."

Mr. Copeland said he expects his daughter's new hands to help the process.

"She'll be able to utilize a lot of different functions, such as holding a glass. She'll have nine different grasping motions with these hands," he said in a televised report. "It's going to be wonderful to see her be able to reserve as much normalcy with her life as possible." 

Though she now has new hands, Aimee Copeland told the crowd at a Salvation Army event in Lawrenceville, Ga., last month that they "don't make a home," according to Snellville Patch. Copeland also said that she did not consider her accident a "bad thing" in that it led her to her life's work. 

See her speech here.

"I've always wanted to help people," she said. "That's why I wanted to study psychology ... After this happened to me, [it became obvious] that I was supposed to work with people with disabilities."

See a video of Copeland using her new hands here.