Australian Man Loses Thumb To Bull, Replaces It With Big Toe

An Australian cattle worker who lost his thumb to a bull underwent eight hours of plastic surgery to replace it with his big toe, according to reports.

While he was working on a Western Australian farm in April, a bull kicked 20-year-old Zac Mitchell’s hand into a fence. The bull removed a patch of Mitchell’s skin and completely severed his thumb. His co-workers collected his thumb after the accident and put it in a cooler with some ice, he said to BBC.

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“The bull was coming through the yard and it run me over,” Mitchell said. “My boss said, ‘Is your head or your hand bleeding.’”

Afterward, Mitchell was taken to a hospital in the state capital of Perth. Doctors there performed two unsuccessful surgeries to reattach his thumb.

“The surgeon explained that [a prosthetic thumb] was pretty pointless and useless in a way, so he talked me into getting my toe put on as sort of my last option,” Mitchell said to Australian broadcaster ABC.

Mitchell agreed to the transplant two weeks ago.

"It’s a bit of a crazy idea — [patients] do not want to be injured in another part of the body," Dr. Sean Nicklin, lead plastic surgeon at Sydney Eye Hospital, told the BBC.

"[However] even if you have got four good fingers, if you do not have something to pinch against them, your hand has lost a huge amount of its function.

"A lot of people think their balance and walking is going to be significantly affected which it generally isn’t."

Thumbs are essential for opening doorknobs and picking things up, making such a surgery necessary. “The thumb is sort of what makes us human because it gives one of our key human functions, which is opposition,” Dr. Joseph Rosen, a surgeon at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire, told the Atlantic in 2014.

Two surgical teams are required for the procedure— one team removes the toe and the other team readies the hand for a transfer. Afterward, doctors used microscopes to reattach the toe onto the area where the thumb once was, paying special attention to the hand’s nuances like nerves, tendons and skin. Doctors searched for a nerve vessel to attach the thumb to the hand and preserve motor functions.

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Mitchell said he will return to his farm job after he recovers. Doctors said he will require more than 12 months of rehabilitation.

Mitchell’s mother, Karen, said her son is almost walking normally two weeks after his surgery. Doctors said Mitchell would eventually be able to bull ride again.

“It’s good news. I’ll be able to get back to work and riding bulls and rodeoing,” Mitchell said to ABC.