Zion Harvey, 9, returned to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia this week to visit surgeons and talk about his progress after receiving a double hand transplant last year.

BALTIMORE — Zion Harvey once dreamed of throwing a football like Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.

Some dreams do come true.

Not only can Zion hurl a football, but he recently pitched a baseball over home plate at a Baltimore Orioles game. He can write with a pencil and hold a fork.

The Randallstown boy could not perform any of these ordinary tasks a year ago. His hands and feet were amputated at age 2 after a sepsis infection caused him to develop gangrene. Then surgeons at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia performed a groundbreaking bilateral hand transplant — giving him new hands and forearms.

On Tuesday, the 9-year-old returned to the Philadelphia hospital, where doctors changed the course of his life, to mark the first anniversary of being the first child ever to undergo a bilateral hand transplant.

The journey to this day was long and arduous. After the surgery, Zion spent more than a month at the hospital recovering and participating in rigorous occupational and physical therapy. He then headed back home where intense daily therapy continued at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. He spent eight hours a day performing exercises that would help his brain learn once again to communicate with his limbs. Other exercises helped his muscles and tendons gain strength and flexibility. Therapists incorporated his interest in sports into therapy.

Using brain mapping, doctors are able to track Harvey’s rehabilitation and directly link therapy to what is going on in his brain.

Doctors will monitor Harvey for the rest of his life. His hands are expected to continue to grow as he does. As with all transplants, he must take daily immunosuppressant drugs so his body does not reject his new limbs. Zion underwent a kidney transplant at age 4 and was already taking the drugs, making him a good candidate for the hands transplants.

A team of 40, including nurses and other staff from plastic and reconstructive surgery, orthopedic surgery, anesthesiology, and radiology, took part in the 10-hour operation. They came from Penn Medicine, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Shriners Hospitals for Children.

Zion’s team of doctors call the boy a pioneer and hope to one day perform the same surgery on other children, and maybe even adults.