Picture and content from ABC News
What really amazes me is that she had only a 25% chance of death in this surgery. That seems really low. This girl has a conjoined twin which never developed a head and was a danger to the girl. At first the parents thought it was a reincarnation of one of their gods. In reality the girl was going to die and over 30 surgeons helped bring hope to her future.
NEW DELHI, India, Nov. 7, 2007 —
In the desperately poor corner of Bihar, India, she was a miracle.
Tiny Lakshmi Tatma was born two years ago with four arms and four legs. The local population considered her the manifestation of a goddess. Her parents named her after the four-armed Hindu goddess of wealth.
A local circus even tried to buy her, but her parents chose health over fame and asked a team of doctors to remove her extra limbs. The surgery, conducted in Bangalore, ended successfully this afternoon.
“The child has withstood the procedure in an excellent manner,” Dr. Sharan Patil, the team leader who planned the surgery for more than a month, told reporters outside the Sparsh Hospital. “This girl can now lead as good a life as anyone else.”
It took more than 30 surgeons 27 hours to not only remove two of Lakshmi’s arms and two of her legs but also to rebuild much of her body and save her organs. They say the chances of death were as high as 25 percent.
The cost of such a complex procedure would have been $625,000, far too great for the Lakshmi’s family to afford. The hospital’s foundation paid.
“We are very grateful to all the doctors for seeing our plight and deciding to help us,” Tatma’s father, Shambhu, told The Associated Press.
The doctors “worked relentlessly through the night to make the operation successful,” Patil said, adding there had been “no setback at any stage of the surgery.”
{ 12 comments }
Awww i’m really pleased for her, she would have got some bulling at school without the operation. thank the load she is well now
bye bye
GOD MOVES IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS HIS WONDERS TO PERFORM….I BLESS GOD THAT SHE’S OKAY…GIVE THANKS
God bless her
who cares
What a beautiful child…even with 8 limbs. May God bless her and her family with health and prosperity.
awww she is such a cutie but how the hell can she produce childern when she gets older???
Herman munster must be mad that he hasnt had his parasitic twin removed?
And he is just that! Herman monster………/
She is a goddess in a modern world not left with many mysteries , may the gods have mercy on the humans who look past the literal miracle we have tried to “correct”. Some things ought to be left to admire and wonder about and the most beautiful things often expire the quickest. I would much prefer a short life of miraculousnous than a long “normal” life.
God bless im glad she had the surgery and i hope everything will work out in the up coming years.
Glad she’s doing well now…such an amazing wonder what the human body is and more amazing the art of surgery to fix it…bless those surgeons.
It never ceases to amaze me how wonderful medicine can be (this is what I call good medicine). I am glad she is doing well.