Hi-Tech Artificial Hand To Add To Mom's Life

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (WUSA) -- "Don't stop at no... just keep going. That's my motto," says Rachel Amarti.

Amarti owns a salon in Old Town Alexandria. Even though she was born without a left hand and forearm, she's never thought of her herself as disabled. As a little girl, she loved to play tricks with her fake arm.

"I was silly," says Amarti. "I would get on the monkey bars and go across, leaving my arm up there and they would say.. OHH!"

Now HER daughter is fascinated with the new hi-tech prosthetic she's about to receive. Four-year-old Gabriela quickly learned how to open and close the hand with electrodes places on muscles just below her elbow.

Rachel's old artificial hand has limited movement and it's covering absorbs ink, like silly putty.

"It's horrible," she says.

At a fitting for her new hand, with electrodes pressed to her stump, she practices working the thumb and five fingers, and easily picked up a small battery.

"I like that," Amarti exclaims.

The new hand looks like it could be the Terminator's. It has a transparent covering which shows all the mechanic's underneath. When Rachel comes in for the final fitting to wear her new hand home, it'll have an opaque flesh-colored covering. It'll look so life-like, she can even paint her nails.

And ink that gets on it will wipe right off. But it isn't cheap. It took six months to convince her insurance company to pay for it.

"The insurance company doesn't want to pay.... fight every bit of the way, " says Elliot Weintraub, Rachel's prosthetist.

He says the latest technology should be available to everyone because it makes people more productive, with simple tasks no longer out of reach.

Rachel is looking forward to "holding the phone and dialing with the other, painting my nails, a little big of everything."