They say the closest a man can come to the pain of childbirth is having a kidney stone,
but one man knows that pain first hand after giving birth to his own twin.
June 1999 - Nagpur, India Thirty-six-year-old farmer Sanju Bhagat lay
on his mattress panting, drenched in sweat, his face contorted with pain. His stomach which had
been swollen his whole life had gotten worse. Now it protruded as if Sanju was 9 months pregnant. It
was firm to the touch, the skin hot and stretched tight as if something was about to burst out.
An ambulance rushed Sanju to Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai.
Doctors examined him and thought he might have a giant tumor in his belly. They decided to operate.
"Basically, the tumor was so big that it was pressing on his diaphragm and that's why he was
very breathless," said Dr. Ajay Mehta. "Because of the sheer size of the tumor, it makes it difficult
[to operate]. We anticipated a lot of problems." Sanju was prepped, put to sleep and the operation
got underway. Dr. Mehta cut into Sanju’s abdomen, expecting to see a tumor. But gallons of fluid
came gushing out. Nurses quickly swabbed up the liquid. Dr. Mehta cut deeper and reached a cavity.
He stopped, caught off guard by something he had never seen before in all his years as a doctor.
"To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside,"
said Dr. Mehta. "It was a bit shocking for me." Inside Sanju’s stomach was a twisted mass of
flesh, bones and hair; a half-formed creature with some developed body parts. Dr. Mehta and
his team began a removal process, pulling a misshapen arm out of Sanju’s stomach.
The arm had a hand with long nails on its fingers. They also pulled out another limb, a jawbone,
hair, and several clumps of tissue, including flesh that was recognizable as genitalia.
Sanju had not actually given birth. The underdeveloped, malformed body of his twin
brother had been living in his body for 36 years. Sanju suffered from one of the strangest, rarest
medical conditions in the world. It’s called fetus in fetu. This is when an underdeveloped,
nonviable fetus grows inside the body of its twin. There are less than 100 cases of this phenomenon
documented in medical literature. Fetus in fetu generally develops in monochorionic,
diamniotic (MCDA) twins. This means the embryos are the product of a single fertilized egg
and share a single placenta, but have separate amniotic sacs. Fetus in fetu is thought to occur
in about every 1 of 500,00 live births. Scientists aren’t entirely sure when
this abnormality occurs, but most likely it happens early in pregnancy when a dominant,
normally developing embryo envelops a recessive embryo. Most of the time fetus in fetu twins
pass away in utero from the strain of sharing a placenta. Sometimes only the underdeveloped fetus
dies in utero or soon after birth and is simply absorbed by the surviving twin. But in some cases,
the undeveloped fetus survives birth. Sometimes the underdeveloped twin forms an umbilical
cord-like connection to the host twin and leeches off of its blood supply like a parasite.
When the abnormality is discovered in a newborn, surgery is performed to remove the parasitic twin.
If surgery isn’t performed in many cases, the parasitic twin will take up valuable space
within the host twin’s body and may even displace vital organs. Sanju’s case is extremely unusual.
It’s surprising that fetus in fetu was discovered in a 36-year-old adult. For all of his life,
Sanju’s mutant twin was living inside him and sucking his life force. There was no
placenta inside Sanju, his mutant sibling had directly connected to Sanju’s blood supply.
After his operation, Sanju made a complete recovery. His pain and his struggle to
breathe disappeared. He wasn’t interested in hearing the details of the surgery or seeing
what had been removed from his body. Previously, people in his village had teased him about his
big belly and pregnancy, now they teased him about giving birth and having a baby.
Just as strange as a twin being ‘pregnant’ with his sibling is a woman who naturally
conceived and gave birth to children of which she was not the biological mother of.
In December of 2002, 26-year-old Lydia Fairchild and her partner Jamie Townsend
were having trouble and decided to separate. Lydia and Jamie had 2 children and Lydia was
pregnant with their third child. Lydia applied with the state for child support.
A routine part of the setup process was that the parents undergo DNA testing to prove
that they are the children’s parents before government assistance would be provided. The
results were shocking. The testing established paternity, showing that Jamie was the father,
but curiously Lydia was ruled out as the mother of her children.
Government authorities were suspicious, accusing Lydia of fraud. She was either claiming benefits
for someone else’s children or part of a surrogacy scam. Lydia was interviewed by the US Department
of Social Service Offices, who told her that her children could be removed. Lydia was devastated.
She had naturally conceived, carried, delivered, and cared for her children. She
had the pictures to prove it. How could this be? To rule out any error in the DNA testing,
Lydia underwent a second set of DNA tests with a completely different laboratory.
The results were the same, Jamie was the father, but Lydia was not the mother of her children.
The government launched an investigation into Lydia that lasted for 16 months. A court officer
was present in the delivery room when Lydia gave birth to her third child to bear witness and take
blood samples for DNA tests. Again, testing revealed Lydia was not the child’s mother.
Officials launched court action to have Lydia’s children taken from her.
Lydia spiraled into depression, but never wavered from her truth that these were her
kids which she conceived and birthed naturally. Thankfully for Lydia, she had a diligent lawyer
Alan Tindell on her side. During research, Alan stumbled onto an unusual case. A Boston woman
Karen Keegan, needed a kidney transplant. Her family had undergone testing to see if they could
be donors. Curiously test results showed that Karen had no DNA link with two of her three sons.
Further testing using DNA samples from Karen’s blood and different tissues from various parts
of her body revealed something interesting. Karen’s blood had no genetic link to her sons,
but a sample from her thyroid showed the fusion of two DNA strands and had genetic links to her sons.
Karen was a tetragametic chimera. Ac chimera is an organism with at
least two genetically distinct types of cells. A tetragametic chimera occurs when during a
pregnancy two separate eggs are fertilized by two sperm and then the two zygotes fuse,
becoming one fetus. The eggs have their own distinct strands of DNA and afterward,
the single egg keeps both DNAs. Essentially Karen was both ‘herself’ and her own twin.
Lydia’s lawyer thought she might also be a chimera and introduced an article from
the New England Journal of Medicine about Keegan to the court. This resulted in the
DNA testing of Lydia’s mother. Her DNA revealed her to be the grandmother of Lydia’s children.
Later a cervical smear from Lydia had DNA cells matching all three of her children.
Lydia was a tetragametic chimera and her vanished twin ‘lived’ on in her ovaries.
Thankfully the follow-up testing brought an end to Lydia’s ordeal and she and her children
could go on to live without fear of separation. Initially, chimerism in humans was thought to
be rare, but now scientists believe that it’s not. It’s just rarely discovered,
especially in so dramatic a way as Karen and Lydia’s cases. Theoretically,
a person with chimerism could have two dads, though there’s no known medical case of that.
A woman would have to have two eggs get fertilized by two different men’s sperm. This is called
heteropaternal superfecundation which would result in a set of twins that are half-siblings.
Superfecundation is rare in humans, one study found 3 cases in a parentage test database
of 39,000 records. It’s impossible to know how often it happens because most
cases are only revealed when paternity is questioned and a DNA test is carried out.
Once the fertilization happens, the twin zygotes would then have to fuse together,
thus creating a person with chimerism who naturally has two dads.
Another rare and complex pregnancy anomaly occurs when a fertilized egg begins to separate but never
completes the split. The fetuses develop into conjoined twins. While it is possible
for conjoined twins to occur when two fertilized eggs begin to fuse but don’t complete the fusion,
scientists believe that this scenario is far less likely.
Conjoined twins are rare, occurring somewhere in 1 in every 50,000 to 60,000 births. In utero,
conjoined twins share a single common chorion or fetal membrane, a placenta, and amniotic sac.
A significant number of conjoined twins suffer stillbirth or pass shortly after birth.
Only about only 18% of all conjoined twins survive longer than 24 hours. For those who do survive,
the main question quickly becomes is it possible to separate the twins? This depends on how the
conjoined twins are joined. According to the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia,
a world renown leader in care for conioned twins, approximately 75 percent of conjoined twins are
joined at least partially in the chest and share organs. If the twins have separate sets of organs,
chances for surgery and survival are greater than if they share the
same organs. Just 5% of conjoined twins are craniopagus or fused at the skull.
Modern technology, especially imaging technology has done wonders in helping
medical experts in assessing whether to separate conjoined twins or not.
No such technology was available when arguably the world’s most famous conjoined twins were born.
Chang and Eng Bunker were born in May, 1811 in the small fishing village of Meklong,
in the Kingdgom of Siam, which is now in modern day the country of Thailand.
A Scottish merchant Robert Hunter discovered the twins on a trade trip to Siam. It took him
a few years but he and an American sea captain Abel Coffin were eventually able to persuade
the twins to travel with them to America. They signed a 5 year contract, after which the twins
were suppose to return to Siam, but never did. In America, 17 year old Chang and Eng were
examined by doctors and exhibited as curiosities in freak shows. For a time
they were P. T. Barnum's most popular attraction. They were often promoted as the Siamese Twins,
and as their popularity grew, the term Simese Twins became synonymous with conjoined twins.
Chang and Eng were xiphopagus twins connected at the sternum by a flexible circular band of
flesh and cartilage, about 5 inches (130 mm) long with a circumference of 9 inches (230 mm). Most
doctors who examined them recommended against surgery. Separation probably would have been
fatal due to death from blood loss, post surgery infection or several other possible
complications that the medical technology of the time was not equipped to handle.
After touring for several years, the Bunker twins settled down, married a pair of sisters and had
children. In 1870, Chang who was a heavy drinker had a stroke. His right side became paralyzed. Eng
who enjoyed good health in his senior years became his brother’s caretaker. Over the next few years,
Chang’s condition continued to slowly deteriorate. During the winter of 1874 Chang caught brochitis.
Early in the morning on January 17th, 1874 one of Eng’s sons came to check on the twins.
He found that his uncle had passed away. He quickly woke his father to tell him
that Uncle Chang was dead and explained that he was going to go get the family doctor.
However, before the doctor could arrive, within 2 hours of learning about his brother’s death
Eng died, terrified at the prospect of being separated from and living without his brother.
What happens when a doctor removes the wrong body part? Find out here: