HILLIARD, Ohio, May 17 (UPI) -- Aimee Copeland, the Georgia woman who lost both hands to flesh-eating bacteria, has been given bionic prosthetic hands that she says behave like natural hands.
Copeland, 25, said the bionic hands she received from Touch Bionics of Hilliard, Ohio, allow her to pick up items as small as a Skittles candy, CNN reported Friday.
"I really want to be able to get back in the kitchen and start cooking some delicious vegetarian meals for myself," she said as she demonstrated her new hands for the media this week. "It just mimics so well a natural hand that it really just reminds me of before the accident, how I would have done things."
Touch Bionic said the bionic hands can cost as much as $120,000 each but Copeland received them free of charge. She spent a week at Touch Bionics learning how to use them.
Doctors amputated Copleand's hands, a leg and a foot in 2012 to save her life after she developed necrotizing fasciitis caused by the flesh-devouring bacteria Aeromonas hydrophila.
She was exposed to the bacteria after she cut her leg in a fall from a homemade zip line on the Little Tallapoosa River, about 50 miles west of Atlanta.
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