Kevin Lopez remembers exactly when he knew he wasn’t like his friends and family.

“It just hit me one day,” he says. It was the morning he was picking out a shirt to wear for his first day of sixth grade. “I just looked at myself and I realized I was different.”

Kevin was born missing the fingers on his right hand. His arm and wrist are fully developed, and he has most of a regular palm. But he just has nubs where his fingers should start.

When he looked in the mirror that day, Kevin says he suddenly felt overwhelmingly self-conscious. So he took off the short-sleeved shirt he was wearing and put on a long-sleeved shirt instead. Even all these years later, he gets choked up re telling the story.

“It was at that point that it became more of a problem,” says Lopez, who is now 20. He’s waiting to become the first person to get a hand transplant because of a birth defect.

The Hard Work Of Waiting For A Hand Transplant

Photo credit: Meredith Rizzo/NPR