Published: Dec. 16, 2023
LANSING, Mich. - Nancy Stone raves about the Sparrow surgeons who performed a series of complex operations to save her right hand after a terrible car accident.
But the Lansing woman, 70, says after more than six weeks in the hospital, she only has one Christmas wish: getting home.
"It's the biggest Christmas gift I could get," said the retired General Motors SPO worker, injured Nov. 2 in an accident on US-127 in Harrison.
Sparrow doctors say Stone is healing well after they performed four surgeries to reconstruct and save her hand in the hours and days after the accident. Stone is spirited and strong, despite losing her left hand in the crash after it was pinned under the roof of her car.
Sparrow physicians and physical therapists are working regularly with her to restore function in her surviving hand and to help her become comfortable with a prosthetic left hand.
"I feel physically like I'm going to conquer it," Stone says.
Stone says that her doctors promised from the start that their goal was 100 percent use of her right hand. She's on target to achieve that and to be home by Christmas, though she still faces continuing physical therapy.
Stone has been treated by plastic surgeons who work at Sparrow through Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine, Department of Surgery, and by Sparrow orthopedic surgeons. Her surgeons are Dr. James Clarkson, Dr. Andrew Zwyghuizen and Dr. Kelly Coffey.
"I've got excellent care," she says.
Still, Stone says, "I'm ready to be home. There's no place like home."