POST FALLS, Idaho - Sitting in the living room of her family's Post Falls home, Kim Houx speaks softly and directly.

Her face is etched with the subtle lines of a woman who has smiled many great smiles.

It's something Kim, 53, still does despite the fact that her hands and feet were amputated less than six months ago.

"I'm just so happy that I'm still here," Kim said.

Punctuating her sentences with fluttering eyelids, she tilts her head back slightly, almost closing her eyes, emphasizing the deep emotional connection she feels to her words.

It is an effective form of body language for one who can no longer use hand gestures to make a point.

The quadruple amputations became necessary last fall after an infection severely damaged her heart, requiring emergency surgery.

Kim's medical odyssey began on a Monday, she and her doctors think, with a routine trip to the dentist for a simple procedure, a crown.

Kim said they don't know for sure that's where the infection came from, but it's what medical professionals told her they suspect.

Within days, she began feeling less and less like herself.

"My whole body just ached. By the weekend I could barely walk. I was dizzy," Kim said.

By Sunday, Scott, her husband of 28 years, put her in the car and rushed her to Kootenai Medical Center. That's the last thing Kim remembers of her first critical weeks in the hospital.

But Scott remembers. He was there by her side through it all.

"It's just amazing that she was able to pull through it," Scott said.

Dr. Robert Burnett, Kim's cardio-thoracic surgeon, said it's amazing she made it to the hospital at all.

"It's a well-known phenomena, the connection between dental work and endocarditis, which is an infection of the lining of the heart, particularly valves that have a structural abnormality," Burnett said.

Kim had a heart murmur, something she never told the dentist. She didn't realize she should.

"To me, I didn't have a heart disease or a problem," Kim said.

Both the American Heart Association and American Dental Association's Web sites indicate endocarditis can happen to anyone, although the risk is far greater for those with heart issues.

"It's sort of like being struck by lightning. It's really impossible to know," Burnett said.

Kim's infection had eroded structures anchoring one of her heart valves causing blood to leak massively back into her lungs, Burnett said.

By the time Scott got Kim to Kootenai Medical Center, Burnett said her heart was pumping as much blood into her lungs as it was to the rest of her body.

The valve had to be replaced.

Burnett said under normal circumstances the procedure is fairly straightforward, but because Kim's condition was so serious, it became critical.

She coded before she got to the operating room, Burnett said.

Scott, the couple's daughter, Mindy, and other family members camped out at the hospital.

There were times hospital staff told Scott he should prepare himself to "let go" of Kim.

"I wouldn't do it. I had to hang in there with her. I couldn't give up," Scott said.

They told Scott his wife was probably going to lose both her hands and possibly her feet.

Dr. Burnett said the amputations became necessary because of the high dose of drugs they had to use to support Kim's blood pressure.

The treatment sacrificed blood flow to the extremities so it could get to Kim's organs and keep her alive.

"She's an amazing, amazing woman that's been through more than any one of us can ever imagine and she has a positive attitude. She should be an inspiration to anyone facing any kind of medical challenge," the heart surgeon said.

Kim remembers waking up some time after the heart surgery before the amputations.

"My hands and feet were wrapped. I knew I was going to have to have them done," she said.

By that time, her only concern was pain, so she asked the hospital staff to do whatever they could to make sure it didn't hurt when they removed the limbs.

She had both hands removed below the elbow close to where her wrists once were.

The feet were removed from slightly below each knee.

By December, Kim started on the road to rehabilitation.

At first, hospital staff would sit her on the edge of the bed and hold her.

"I'm terrified. I've got no feet and no hands," Kim said. "They would tell me they weren't going to let me fall."

When she received her prosthetic legs, she admits to being "taken aback" by how they looked.

She thought they would look like normal legs, but they were rods.

"The lady at Kootenai Prosthetics said to me, 'In winter you wear pants and in summer, who cares?' I thought, 'That's right, who cares?"' Kim said.

Learning to walk again using the parallel walking bars used by rehabilitation patients presented a unique challenge for Kim.

Without hands to grasp the bars to balance herself, Kim had to push herself even harder than most to learn to propel her new prosthetic legs along while remaining upright.

Fear of falling and pain seemed insurmountable at times.

"I would think, 'I can't do this. I'm going to end up in a wheelchair for the rest of my life," Kim said.

But, once again, she did not give up.

A February visit from double-amputee triathlete Scott Rigsby helped motivate her.

"When I saw Ironman walking in, I knew I could do this," Kim said. "He said, 'You're going to get there. You're going to get just like me."'

Rigsby, the first below-the-knee double amputee to complete an Ironman triathlon, spoke to The Press by telephone from his home in Georgia.

He visited Kim when he was in Coeur d'Alene in January speaking to elementary and high school students throughout the week of Martin Luther King's birthday.

After one of his talks at an elementary school, a woman approached him and told him there was a woman at Kootenai Medical Center who had recently become a quadruple amputee.

Rigsby went to the hospital to see her.

"What I said to her was that almost every amputee, when you go from full independence to being dependent on people, your ego really takes a beating. We don't want to be a burden to anyone. To ask people for help is really tough, it's humbling," Rigsby said.

He told Kim many people set unrealistic goals for themselves during the rehabilitation process and encouraged her to take baby steps.

He said there are greater stories about Kim that haven't been written yet.

"Where's she going to get the greatest reward and benefit in her life is when she's able to take her experience and pour that into another person," Rigsby said.

After the meeting with Rigsby, Kim said she stopped setting goals and started taking things a day at a time.

"I quit asking why and started thinking maybe there's a purpose. It could be helping other people with prosthetics," Kim said.

She goes to Kootenai Health's McGrane Center for Rehabilitation every day for physical therapy and to take advantage of their adult day care services.

Kim's physical therapy is vigorously focused on using her prosthetic arms.

There are strengthening exercises for her shoulders and arm muscles as well.

She has to re-learn how to complete every task.

"It's all taken for granted until it's taken away," said occupational therapist J.T. Patterson.

Patterson, with Kootenai Health's rehabilitation services, said Kim has to learn to use muscles in her elbow area to operate electrodes that move her prosthetic hands.

Patterson said Kim has to "rewire her thinking" for the way she does things - reprogram the way her brain responds to completing common tasks.

He's hopeful about her continued success.

"She's got a dynamic personality to be dealing with something this traumatic," Patterson said. "She's pretty much a model patient for this."

The prosthetic hands she has are only able to make pinching motions, limiting what Kim is able to do.

Her dream is to find a way to afford new hands she read about in a magazine she picked up at the prosthetist's office.

The hands Kim wants are by Touch Bionics, a Scotland company that has developed the world's first commercially available bionic hand. The new technology provides five independently powered fingers that open and close around things like regular hands.

"That would be spectacular for her," said Bob Miller, the Coeur d'Alene prosthetist who outfitted Kim with her new limbs.

Miller smiles when he speaks about Kim's journey and says he considers her remarkable.

At first, the whole world was a challenge for Kim, he said, but she will continue to do what she's been doing, becoming more and more adept at using her upper extremities.

"She's a work in progress," Miller said. "I think the sky's the limit for Kim. She stopped asking, 'Why me?' and started asking 'What's next?"'