Continuing coverage on the mom we first told you about on Wednesday, Thursday 36-year-old Amanda Flores got some new prosthetic hands!
WUSA9 cameras were there for it all. There were lots of laughs and emotions.
First came the laughs, especially when the prosthetics showed Flores how to ‘flip the bird.’ (She didn’t ask, FYI.)
Screams of laughter came in waves when he also told her to rotate her wrist in that position.
That’s not exactly something WUSA9 can fully show, but the excitement is.
Thirty-six-year-old Amanda Flores finally got a new pair of prosthetic hands on Thursday, a lifeline for the Silver Spring mom who is fighting for her family.
“Now having these great new hands and the next step is driving. I pray, I pray I pray,” she said.
The Silver Spring mom then broke out in tears saying, “It’s okay that it happened to me but it’s not fair to cut them short of what they deserve and the childhood they deserve and I just, I would really love to make them feel as normal as possible.”
She's engaged with two kids.
Flores stood tall, smiling in a yellow dress with her two sons at each of her sides. It’s a photo from before November 2014. After that Christmas Eve is when Flores became a quadruple amputee. She told WUSA9 she nearly lost her life after bacteria from a strep throat infection entered her blood stream.
The mother of two says she had been misdiagnosed leading up to this and woke up in the hospital to the amputations.
“The reason she’s here is because of those little boys. They told us in the hospital, unless she had something to live for, it was going to be very hard for her to get through this,” said her sister, Isabel Llerena.
A supportive sister, Llerena took Flores to the Thursday visit. Help from her family is how Flores says she manages to get by.
It’s not just health battles but insurance battles as well.
“When we’re trying to attain prosthetics that are going to work for her three years down the road, it’s a lot of fight,” said Mike Muratore, a Clinic Manager with Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics.
He says Flores' insurance company didn't even want to give Flores any prosthetics at first.
Flores says Muratore took her on despite these complications.
Amanda grew tired after texting the news hands for close to an hour. She’s using muscles she hasn’t used in a very long time. Flores and her sister told WUSA9 this was the technology they were looking at when Flores was still in the hospital, some 2.5 years ago.
Flores can finally pay for this through Medicare, but it won’t pay for her ultimate goal, which is getting a specialized van mainly so she can independently take care of her kids.
“It would mean the world if I could just give them some normalcy and help them,” said Flores.
If you were still wondering, Flores is still engaged with hopes of getting married. We’re told her fiancé is a Police Officer in D.C. and has also played a tremendous role in her recover.
Her fiancé and family members have been crowd-funding to raise enough money for this van. If you’d like to help, click here.
