2008 in india what happened to the child born with two faces?
Girl Born With Eight Limbs Thrives in India
Lakshmi, considered a goddess by villagers, learns to walk on her own.
June 13, 2008— -- In a remote village in the Bihar region of northeast India, in October 2005, a adult female named Poonam Tatma gave nascency to an boggling child -- a girl with four arms and 4 legs who was destined to become famous worldwide.
The newborn was the image of a multi-limbed Hindu goddess named Lakshmi, who is worshiped as a deity of wealth and skilful fortune. And so the child was besides named Lakshmi.
"After she was born, for a whole month crowds of people came to see her," Tatma said. "It was said that Lakshmi had been born hither."
The family unit's story is a spellbinding tale of religion and science, assembled past the National Geographic Aqueduct for a documentary to exist aired Sun, June 22.
Goddess or Medical Marvel?
When Lakshmi turned historic period 2, a socialworker sent photos of her to Dr. Sharan Patil, who is a leading orthopedic surgeon at Sparsh Infirmary in Bangalore, Republic of india, which specializes in treating skeletal abnormalities in children.
"I had never seen anything like those pictures," Patil said. "Nosotros had read near information technology in our books, and medically, it was fascinating because information technology was such a rare thing."
The doctor likewise knew that the child had come to be revered by many villagers. "They thought she was very special," Patil said. "She was a godsend; she was a reincarnation. They almost worshiped her in the hamlet."
Rajesh Kumar Singh, the village main, told National Geographic that "A kid who looks like this, with 4 arms and four legs, according to our scriptures, must be the Goddess Lakshmi. Information technology's a wonderful piece of luck to have a child born like this and surviving like this."
The Tatma family earned the equivalent of about $200 a year from farming, and couldn't afford even basic medicines for Lakshmi. They could have profited by charging others to see her, only chose non to. They turned down an offer to sell her to a traveling circus.
Her parents, too, believed she was a goddess. But they also knew she had the needs of a disabled kid. Her mother worried about how she would provide care when Lakshmi grew older. "Picking her upwardly, sitting her downwards, putting her to sleep, these are the problems," Poonam Tatma said. "She tries to crawl with other children only they go alee of her. She can't keep up. The trouble is what will happen when she is older? Correct now, she is small, then nosotros can practice it. When she is older, who will do information technology?"
Determined to study the child, Patil went on a journeying to the remote Araria district in Bihar to meet Lakshmi and her family. His arrival in the village caused a stir. Cars are rarely seen in Bihar.
Patil approached the Tatma family unit gently by asking if he could conduct examine Lakshmi. "I think the past experience of the parents, of reaching out to the doctors, was that the circumstances were probably not right. They had had bad feel in the past. So they had their reservations to start with. They were wondering if we had some ulterior motives toward them."
Grave Health Dangers
What Patil discovered is that the child that many associated with the image of a goddess was, in fact, a case so rare that only a few have been known in history. Lakshmi had 2 artillery and two legs that functioned commonly (they were the uppermost limbs on each side of her body). Below those limbs, in mirror image, were two more sets of arms and legs.
The lower part of Lakshmi's torso was a blazon of conjoined twin called a parasitic twin.
"I of the babies is live, but the other infant doesn't be equally an individual," Patil said. "The two bodies are fused together. ... The entire parasitic part of Lakshmi's trunk was feeding on Lakshmi for nutrition, for oxygen, for energy, for everything else. That's typically how a parasite is described … a parasite which is dependent on the host."
Considering of the parasite, Lakshmi'south wellness and possibly her survival were in danger. Patil believed the parasitic twin should be surgically removed. Without surgery, Patil estimated that Lakshmi'southward chances of surviving past her teenage years were minimal.
Village Backlash
Merely in Lakshmi's example, he faced something more than a medical issue. A local fair to celebrate the holy day of the goddess Lakshmi coincided with Patil's visit. Once the little daughter who was the image of Lakshmi entered the crowd, it was clear that she had a profound effect on the villagers.
"She was thought to exist bringing a lot of good things to the hamlet and the people around," Patil said. "Some of them even folded their easily in respect for the fiddling girl, which was quite amazing."
Because she was considered a practiced omen to the village, Patil worried that some villagers might be against surgery to change her form into that of an typical 2-twelvemonth-onetime.
"I'm sure a lot of the people in the village had those ideas in their minds, that if something was done to Lakshmi, things might turn effectually, and things might not be and then skillful for them anymore," Patil said.
Privately, Lakshmi's parents had heard many negative opinions -- that some villagers feared the Tatmas could not return if they left; and that Patil might say one matter and do some other.
"They had the genuine love and business organisation … that any parents would have for the child," Patil said.
To reassure the parents, Patil arranged for all of the family unit's medical expenses to be paid through his hospital. Recognizing that medical care is out of the reach of millions of people in Republic of india, Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore has a foundation whose mission is to extend orthopedic and reconstructive surgical care to those who need information technology, regardless of income.
Every day was different for the Tatma family because of fluctuations in Lakshmi'southward health. "So she actually was living on the edge," Patil said.
Having weighed their options advisedly, Lakshmi's parents finally decided to travel more than one,000 miles from their village to Sparsh Hospital, a country-of-the-art facility where doctors performed a bombardment of tests to see whether surgery was even possible.
The commencement 10-rays revealed complications. Lakshmi's spine was joined to that of her parasitic twin, and doctors had to decide how to separate the spine without affecting Lakshmi neurologically. They also discovered that Lakshmi had only one functioning kidney. A 2nd functioning kidney was in the parasitic twin.
"The team itself [included] 37 people equally function of the surgical procedure," Patil said. "We had five sets of surgeons who operated on the footling girl."
A Life-Threatening Surgery
On November. six, 2007, Lakshmi was wheeled away from her parents, and the surgery began.
Pediatric surgeons made the showtime incision, to identify her internal structures -- "which of them belonged to the parasite and which belonged to Lakshmi," Patil said.
Surgeons tied off connecting blood vessels, ensuring that Lakshmi's vital organs weren't damaged. After the parasite'south performance kidney was transplanted to Lakshmi, neurosurgeons began the dangerous separation of Lakshmi'due south spine where it was continued to the spine of the parasite.
"One [couldn't] make out where the spine of Lakshmi ended and and so the other one started," Patil said. "So nosotros erred on the side of safety, and preserved some role of the spine of the parasite."
At midnight, xvi hours into the operation, came the riskiest surgery of all. Doctors were finally ready to remove Lakshmi'southward conjoined, parasitic twin.
"Information technology was a very disquisitional and crucial phase because there were a lot of body fluid shifts, and the moment we tie off the blood vessels, there is a buildup of chemicals in the parasitic twin, which tin become unsafe if they travel back into the host tissue. So nosotros had to be pretty quick from that point on. ... Speed was of the essence at that point in time."
Some other crucial stage in the reconstructive surgery was to bring the bones of Lakshmi'southward pelvis together so that they could support her vital organs.
Twenty-four hours subsequently the surgery began, Patil finally was able to reassure Lakshmi'south parents. "The performance was successful," he told them. "Lakshmi is healthy."
In her room, recovering from the surgery after sleeping soundly, Lakshmi began to open her eyes and move her fingers. For the first time, her parents saw the kid who once had been the image of a goddess equally an average 2-year-erstwhile, with ii arms and two legs.
"Lakshmi had 1 strange look on her face, looking downwardly at her ain body," Patil said. "I don't know how to put information technology but … I well-nigh felt that she was telling me, 'Medico, good chore done.'"
Life With Four Limbs
When Lakshmi was released from the hospital a calendar month after the surgery, the family took her to the desert country of Rajasthan, far from their hamlet, where she began attending a school for disabled children.
During a school break, they returned to their village for a visit. Lakshmi is learning to raise herself upright and residue herself. She has begun to take her offset steps.
"Now she tin walk on her own," her female parent said. "Her cousin comes, and they play the whole twenty-four hour period long."
A member of a television crew that traveled to Bihar to videotape Lakshmi's progress in early on June said that some of the villagers had grown resentful of the Tatma family, believing the Tatmas had benefited financially from the free medical intendance.
The family is not wealthy. Lakshmi'due south father, Shambu, works as a day laborer. When the Tatmas return to Rajasthan so that Lakshmi can go on attending the school for disabled children, he will work for the school.
Lakshmi will need additional surgery where her spine was separated from her parasitic twin. She besides will need surgery on her feet, which were turned inward because of their positioning above the area where she was joined to the parasite.
A statue of Lakshmi, made by a hamlet craftsman when she still had viii limbs, remains in the village. Some villagers told interviewers they still consider Lakshmi a goddess. Certainly, her parents do.
"I think for every parent the child is a goddess," Patil said.
Asked whether he believed there was a higher power involved in Lakshmi's story, he said, "Information technology is the wishes of many people; it is the prayers of many people; it is the will of the child to alive. ... Everything put together, to come together, it has to be some kind of divine intervention."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5055673&page=1
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