Back in 1999, Mark Holmgren at the age of 17,?suffered a brachial plexus injury when he crashed his brother¡¯s motorbike, tearing several nerves in his shoulder and rendering his right arm dysfunctional.?
Holmgren, now 37, carried his dysfunctional arm around fornearly two decades thinking hopingadvancements in medical science will help him keep his arm.
To no avail,this year he decided to do something about it. He gathered the courage tocontact doctors at the University of Alberta Hospital to carry out theprocedure in April, on one condition, he?wanted the appendage back after surgery.
Holmgren didn¡¯t want to depart with his arm forever¡ªhe wanted to have it preserved.?About a month after the surgery, Holmgren got a call from the lab saying his arm was ready to be picked up.
?"I carried it out of the hospital in a garbage bag. I actually kept it in my freezer for about a month," Holmgren told CTV.? ?
Holmgren retrieved the arm from the hospital in a garbage bag and then stored it in his freezer until finding a taxidermist to preserve the severed appendage.?
With flesh-eating beetles and other bugs, the taxidermist let these insects chow down on the arm¡¯s flesh until there was nothing but bone left.?So, Holmgren could carry it wherever he wanted without worry.?
The bones were then cleaned and polished and Holmgren picked up his strange trophy from the store just before Christmas.?
Losing a body part is an extremely difficult emotion to deal with physically and mentally, While some learn to cope with it through therapy, others like Mark Holmgren resort to extreme measures.?
At the end of the day, it's all about keeping your sanity intact, even if it means carrying the skeletal remains of your own arm around.?