The Eight-Limbed Girl Can Walk Now!

When this girl was born in a poor village in Bihar (northern India), the locals regarded her as the reincarnation of the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth, Lakshmi. That's why the girl was named Lakshmi. Lakshmi had attracted the attention of people eager to gain money from her deformity: a circus even tried to buy the girl, and the parents had to hide the child. But Lakshmi Tatma is not a goddess: she was born with a headless, undeveloped parasitic twin joined to her pelvis, and the extra four limbs were the arms and legs of the undeveloped sister. The other twin ceased growing in the mother's womb.

Lakshmi integrated the limbs, kidneys and other organs of the undeveloped fetus into her body, resulting two merged spines, four kidneys, entangled nerves, two stomach cavities and two chest cavities. Conjoined twins appear at a rate of one to 200,000 births, developing from a sole fertilized egg, thus they are identical. Survival rate is 5 to 25%. 600 surviving couples are known in the last 500 years, of which 70% were females.

The 2-year old Lakshmi could not stand up or walk on her many limbs. In November 2007, a team of 30 medics led by Dr. Sharan Patil, at a private Bangalore hospital, operated freely Lakshmi for giving her a normal life. The surgery lasted 27 hours (and was evaluated to $ 60,000) and it had been previously denied by a New Delhi hospital.

The team separated Lakshmi's spinal column, extra-limbs and kidney from that of the parasite. Now Lakshmi has started to walk making her first assisted steps, in the new residence of the family in the western state of Rajasthan, and she can now sit up without difficulty.

"When she was put in the baby walker, she started pushing herself backwards with her legs and burst into laughter with a huge grin on her face. She loves it. Every day since she left the hospital, she's managed to do more and more things that were impossible earlier," Lakshmi's mother Poonam said.

The girl left the hospital in December, and the family settled in Rajasthan's Jodhpur district, where a charity had offered them lodging and free education. The girl will need further operations to correct club feet and rebuild pelvic floor muscles.
"Lakshmi is still facing some major urinary problems and her legs are bent to some extent. The surgery is likely to be carried out in the next two months," said Dr B.S Bhati.

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