2/5/2005: Peruvian "mermaid baby"
 

http://cellar.org/2004/mermaidbaby.jpg


She's nine-month-old Milagros Cerron. She's got this rare condition called "mermaid syndrome"; not really that rare, it's just rare for a baby to survive this long. 1-in-60,000 to 100,000 babies are born with sirenomelia, apparently, and most complications are fatal.

Somehow this girl has survived and she is going to have risky surgery to separate and correct her legs.

How sad. Hope she does well.

full story

poor child :(
the article says she's being treated in a City Hall-funded mobile "solidarity hospital" run out of old buses in a poor northern district of Lima.
not exactly the best conditions for the surgery where they will try to seperate her to take place.
apparently there was another case like this where the girl survivedd

I heard that she became a talented and beautiful swimmer -- who would spread her legs for no man.

Wow -- Torrere, check your ticket. Does yours say "17B"? If so, you caught a seat next to me on your trip to hell. Don't bug me while I'm pretending to sleep, okay?

Have Tom Jones or Julio Iglesias sing to her. :biggrin:

Ok, I'm sorry, but I gotta ask....

How does she take a crap?


(Aisle seat, if you please!)

In the full story link it says she has an anus.

Where those are located is anyones guess. :eyebrow:

I can fathom the operation to separate her legs.
It takes quite an imagination to visualize how they will separate her anus, urethra, and genetalia.
I guess that in her current condition, personal hygeine is practically unacheivable.
If the surgeons can't figure that one out, I'll bet noone would WANT her to spread her legs.........................

You always hear about these kind of birth defects in third world countries. Wonder if the family lived near a chemical plant or dump site. :yelsick:

We could carpool to the River Styx!

I believe her name, Milagros, means "miracles". Here's hoping she gets some. She's a beautiful child, and no one deserves such a horrid deformity. Come on, medical science.

It does. Hopefully the fact that her situation is getting some press will get some expert doctors involved in this. She's definitely a pretty little thing, I hope she can get some good help.

My guess is at the front. Dolphins and whales have a ventral opening (I think it's called a cloaca, or is that just for birds?) and I reckon that since we're all mammals these things will follow the same basic structure.

I bet good cash money that some hospital here in the States will fund the family to come here and have the surgery done...it's happened before for Siamese twins and other birth deformities. Especially when said generosity gets good press for the hospital in question.

Brian

Well of course, we're the great white enemy until something like this comes along.