EVERYBODY NEEDS A LITTLE TLC
1:42 p.m. on December 29, 2005

**WARNING**

MEDICAL PHOTOS BELOW MAY BE TOUGH TO LOOK AT.


TLC, The Learning Channel is my new favorite TV Station.

Last week we watched: �I Am My Own Twin�, �Born Without a Face�, and �Born With Two Heads�.

I am My Own Twin: �Babies are being born split right down the middle, half black and half white, a testicle on one side and a vagina on the other. Explore the extraordinary medical phenomena that causes two different babies to fuse together in the womb.�

This is also called Chimerism, taken from Chimera: a fire-breathing she-monster in Greek mythology having a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.

This was interesting, but I actually saw an episode on CSI about this. If twins of the same sex merge together in the womb, it is really hard to tell, but the result is a person that can have two distinct sets of DNA. This could potentially add a wrinkle to any crime scene investigation.

Born Without a Face was tougher to watch. A little girl who was born perfect in every way, except she was missing 40 % of the bones in her face. She has no upper jaw, no cheekbones, no eye sockets, and she's missing the corner of her ear. This was actually very touching and heart wrenching. Her parents were wonderful.

At birth:

2 years old, after a thousand surgeries.


Born With Two Heads was pretty bizarre. I have seen Siamese twins and even a person with one body, two heads, but this was more unusual. This was a little baby girl that had another head growing with a partially formed torso out the top of her head. The parasitic twin could laugh and blink and cry like any other baby. The second head needed to be removed, because it was growing faster than the other head and impeding development so much that they both could die. The surgery seemed to be successful.




Coming up on TLC on January 2nd at 08:00 PM:

Face Eating Tumor

-and-

Woman With Half a Body




I am so there.






Space Holder. - February 12, 2012

BEAUTIFUL BOY - August 26, 2011

COUNTDOWN - July 13, 2011

SEXAY - June 16, 2011

BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS - May 30, 2011

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