There are miracles all around us. Some we see and recognize for what they are, some we don’t because they are subtle, or are what we call commonplace and don’t give them credence. Then there are some that are happening, and we don’t know about them. I want to tell you of one such miracle.

I have a friend who had a heart attack January 2011. He had triple bypass surgery and all went well. After the surgery, his heart is as good as new, but the wound at the incision site is not. Due to complications and infection, he has had an open chest wound for 15 months.

He had a wound vacuum pump that aided in the healing, but it took eight-and-a-half months, and the incision still did not close correctly. The plastic surgeon who saw the wound recommended radical surgery of taking a muscle from the patient’s back and transplanting it in the chest to augment the muscle there, and aid healing. Such surgery would have had a long and painful recovery lasting months…again.

On Feb. 16th of this year, at the last minute, the same doctor suggested using a miracle. The new procedure would be on an outpatient basis, and my friend would be home that afternoon. He was, and in very little pain. When he told me what they had done to him, I laughed, and still do, but not from incredulity. Now I laugh in amazement. It is a miracle.

The surgeon wanted to try something new. He wanted to treat the wound with a thin sheet of pig bladder tissue. Yeah, that was my reaction too, but read on.

As the company website that markets this miracle says of the product, it is “ … a complex protein scaffold obtained from the tissue of pig bladders, which has a structure nearly identical to that of human tissue.” It goes on to say, “The use of pig tissue is an established practice and a variety of pig tissues have been implanted in humans for medical purposes for more than 40 years.” 

I was intrigued and wanted to know more.

I met John Deeds, the local representative for the matrix, as they call it, and he wowed me even further. John showed me some pictures of patients that had been treated with pig bladder.

The first series of pictures showed the right index finger of a young man who had dropped a weight on it, and suffered a traumatic amputation of the finger just above the first knuckle. After the usual treatment of closing off the wound, the finger was treated with sheets of the pig bladder matrix, and over several months, the finger actually grew back. It regenerated to the point that the fingerprint came back and was identical to the original.

The next case was a man who had lost the flesh of his nose to cancer.  Again, after several months, the nose flesh regenerated. This time the regenerated nose was a match for his picture on his driver’s license.

How can such a thing be? How is it possible for a finger to grow back the way it was, nail and fingerprint intact? How can nose flesh grow back the way it was? I needed to know.

Salamanders can re-grow their tails, upper and lower jaws, their eyes and hearts. If an amphibian can, why can’t a human? Scientific evidence indicates that we humans have the potential for limb regeneration in our genes, but those genes are dormant in our bodies. 

When you lose an entire limb, the body reacts by covering that wound site with thick scar tissue to ward against infection.  If that tissue is removed, or prevented from growing and the pig bladder tissue is applied, the limb, or organ, can regenerate, if not completely, at least in part.

Not to get too technical, it works like this: Again, I quote, in part, from the company’s website. The matrix is able to “maintain and support a healing environment through constructive remodeling,” with, “numerous collagens,” which, “repairs and remodels damaged tissues.” In other words, the body does not forget its parts, and given the proper environment and building material that the pig bladder provides, can regenerate.

I asked about amputations more severe than a finger, and learned that this procedure has been used on returning veterans who have suffered partial loss of limbs. Although Mr. Deeds would not claim complete regeneration, he did indicate that growth occurred to the point of making the traumatized limb more functional.

He recounted to me a case where a soldier lost 80 percent of the quadriceps muscle in his right leg. Doctors initially wanted to amputate, but tried physical therapy first, and after a year, the right leg was able to do only a small percentage of the work of the whole, left leg. The pig bladder matrix was tried, and after several months, the right leg had regenerated sufficient muscle to be stronger than the left leg.

This treatment is used in general and plastic surgery, for burns, wounds, gynecology, and in, as their website calls it, “extraordinary situations,” such as limb amputations. The possibilities are endless, and science is making extraordinary discoveries like this every day.

I accuse my friend of being “cross specied,” and call him “Pig Boy.” I bought him a big bag of pork rinds, which he, playing along, tearfully refused saying he could not eat his brother. We laugh, but we both know we are seeing a miracle. They are all around us. Look.

David Wilson Atwood is a local writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be contacted, and his other works viewed at: www.starchasers.us, or david@starchasers.us.