The Girl Who Was Worshipped as a Deity

At Medlink, we learnt about Lakshmi Tatma.

Lakshmi Tatma was born in 2005, in a village in the Araria District, Bihar.  She was worshipped as an incarnation of the god, Lakshmi, due to the fact she appeared to have been born with eight limbs.

In reality, Lakshmi's extra limbs, were the result of her being an ischiopagus (the fused lower half of two bodies) conjoined twin.  The two babies had joined and her twins head had then begun to disintegrate and its chest was severely underdeveloped, resulting in, what looked like one child with eight limbs.

Lakshmi came from a very poor, labouring family (her parents earned less than 40 rupees per day), which meant they could not afford the 8201966.42 rupees for the surgery.  However, Lakshmi's spinal chord was fused with that of her twins, their nerves were entangled.  Lakshmi's abdominal aorta gave off arteries that supplied her parasitic twin's legs with blood and doctors predicted that without surgery, she was unlikely to live into her teens.

Lakshmi's surgery began on 6 November 2007 and was funded entirely by the hospitals charitable wing.  The surgery lasted for 27 hours and was split into the following sections:

• Abdominal surgery to remove the twin's organs
• Remove Lakshmi's dying kidney and replace it with the twin's functioning kidney 
• Move the reproductive system and urinary bladder into Lakshmi
• Amputation of the twin's legs at the hip joints (which caused heavy bleeding)
• Cut the fused backbone (had the possibility of causing paralysis)
• Separation 
• External Fixation (to hold the pelvis in place)
• Sutures

Due to the work of 30 surgeons, Lakshmi's operation was successful.  She was in hospital for a month after the surgery and has now recovered and leads a normal life.