Macchiarini performed the nine-hour operation on April 9 at the Children's Hospital of Illinois after carefully creating the windpipe using stem cells from Hannah's bone marrow that were saturated over a matrix of plastic fibers shaped into a tube.
On Monday, they were home with their grateful mother, and Shaw and Rocky were being honored at the fire station -- Shaw with a fireman's hat and Rocky with a giant rawhide bone he grabbed from Fire Chief Ken Block before Block could take off its plastic wrapper.