In the city of Nagpur, India, Sanju Bhagat’s stomach was once so swollen
he looked nine months pregnant and could barely breathe. Bhagat felt
self-conscious his whole life about his big belly. But his problem
erupted into something much larger than cosmetic worry one night in June
1999.
An ambulance rushed the 36 year-old farmer to the hospital. Doctors
thought he might have a giant tumor, so they decided to operate and
remove the source of the bulge in his belly. The surgeon Dr. Ajay Mehta
said that usually he can spot a tumor just after he begins an operation.
But Dr. Ajay encountered something he had never encountered while
operating on Bhagat.
As he cut deeper into Bhagat, gallons of fluid spilled out– and then
something extraordinary happened. “To my surprise and horror, I could
shake hands with somebody inside his belly!” he said. “It was a bit
shocking for me.” Dr. Ajay just put his hand inside and he said there
are a lot of bones inside. First, one limb came out then another limb
came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some
limbs, jaws, limbs, hair.
Inside Bhagat’s stomach was a strange, half-formed creature that had
feet and hands that were very developed. Its fingernails were quite
long. At first glance, it may look like Bhagat gave “birth.” Actually,
Dr. Ajay removed the mutated body of his Bhagat’s twin brother from his
stomach.
Bhagat, they discovered, had one of the world’s most bizarre medical
conditions known as fetus in fetu. It is an extremely rare abnormality
that involves a fetus getting trapped inside of its twin. The trapped
fetus can survive as a parasite even past birth by forming an umbilical
cord-like structure that leeches its twin’s blood supply until it grows
so large that it starts to harm the host, at which point doctors usually
intervene.
According to Dr. Ajay, there are less than 90 cases total recorded in
medical literature. Fetus in fetu happens very early in a twin
pregnancy, when one fetus wraps around and envelops the other. The
dominant fetus grows, while the fetus that would have been its twin
lives on throughout the pregnancy, feeding off its host twin like a kind
of parasite.
Usually, both twins die before birth from the strain of sharing a
placenta. However, sometimes, as in Bhagat’s case, the host twin
survives and is delivered. What makes his case so unusual is that no one
suspected Bhagat had a twin inside him for 36 years.
Bhagat said he was very much relieved after his operation. He was not
interested in knowing what Dr. Ajay did to him or seeing what he had
removed from his abdomen. “He didn’t want to see it because it was
looking very ghastly” Dr. Ajay said. Today, Bhagat is in good health and
can lead a normal life.
No comments:
Post a Comment