YO! WHAT KIND OF CREEP WOULD STEAL SOMEBODY'S HANDS?

It's been a long, hard year for Tabitha Mullings: She lost her hands - and then she lost them again.
The Brooklyn single mom fell suddenly ill last year, damaging all four limbs and her eyesight. And then in the spring, a heartless thief stole her prosthetic hands from her car.

"My legs were still there in the trunk," Mullings said.

Still, Mullings - whose story has been chronicled in the Daily News since the beginning - has not lost hope.

"I believe in miracles," said Mullings, 33. "I still wish and pray that this did never happened to me, but I realize God gave me a second chance.

"It was only my hands and feet that were taken, not my heart and soul," she said.

She has tried to think positively since she was sent home from Brooklyn Hospital's emergency room with painkillers for a kidney stone - and soon developed a sepsis infection and gangrene.

Medics never took her to the hospital, and on Sept. 14, 2008, Mullings lapsed into a coma and hovered near death for two weeks.

Hospital spokesman Gerald McKelvey said Mullings was properly evaluated, treated and discharged.

"The Brooklyn Hospital Center continues to wish Ms. Mullings well in her ongoing recovery," he said.

Buoyed by love from her three sons and fiance Kahseem Davis and the caregivers at Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, Mullings' recovery has had more ups than downs.

At her ground-floor three-bedroom apartment in East New York, wide doorways and hallways accommodate a wheelchair.

"The wheelchair is gathering dust in my grandmother's apartment," Mullings said, noting she prefers to walk on her own two titanium steel feet.

Next month, her new robotic hands will be ready - a $70,000 pair considerably more high-tech than the ones stolen by thieves.

Even with stumps, Mullings applies makeup, picks up kitchen utensils and mops the tile floor.

At the nearby Gateway shopping center, Mullings often receives hugs from strangers who recognize her from the media.

"Tabitha remains a role model for those who have suffered catastrophic physical losses," said her lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, who is suing the city and the hospital.

Still, she gets frustrated and depressed at times.

Mullings takes anti-depressants and sees a psychotherapist regularly. "I have some really bad days," she said.

She knows she has someone special in Davis, though.

"He still hugs me the same and kisses me the same," she said. "He tells me I'm beautiful."