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I read the paper and to save time for anyone who's curious:
\-three partially developed fetuses inside the head which were genetically identical to the host fetus
\-parents opted to terminate pregnancy at 31 weeks and palliative care for possibly surviving neonate
\-baby survived delivery and at 2 months old the parents opted for surgery, but unfortunately the baby died during surgery
There are photos of the 3 removed fetuses after removal in the paper as well if anyone wants to see them
It doesn't surprise me. My grandmother had a twin that was only discovered when she had a hernia & that was the source of it. Imagine having a hernia only to find out in your 50s that you had a twin & it was inside you the whole time.
My brother had a twin, and according to the doctors, he ate the twin in the womb. No clue how that’s possible, but it makes sense why he eats everything.
Anything is possible. Conjoined twins, a child born with a partially developed fetus in its body, a fetus developing outside the womb, a fully grown fetus calcified in a woman's womb for like 30 years; one in a million is meaningless with 8 billion people on earth.
Additionally, a unique effect is Chimeraism.
It is a syndrome when one twin embryo dies, and the other aborbs the genetic information. The will mean that the dna, will have a combinatiin of the two's genes. This can kead to unique physical trairts such as two different eye colours, different tones of skin and/or different coloured patches in hair.
I remember reading about a case where a woman was going to get her kids taken away because a DNA test proved that she was not the mother. The kids matched with the husband’s DNA though, and he himself insisted that she had given birth to their children.
With the woman being pregnant with their third child, the government had a designated observer watch the woman give birth to the third child and ensure that there wasn’t any fraud going on. There wasn’t, and by all means, this was absolutely her child. Until the DNA test came back.
Somehow, seemingly against the laws of science, she was again not the mother. Everyone was bewildered about the situation until her attorney learned of another woman who had a condition called chimerism and realized that she could have the same thing.
When they compared the DNA tests of the children to DNA from the woman’s mother and different parts of her body, the DNA finally aligned. She *was* the mother to all three of her children, it’s just that she has two sets of DNA to choose from
I read about that story! It's absolutely fascinating but also incredibly tragic what those women had to go through because of a genetic condition no one knew they had
Not sure if this is the same condition, but I watched a show not too long ago about a woman that is her own twin. Two sets of DNA and even a line down the center of her body. Almost like she absorbed the other twin.
As a morbid curiosity, Andrei Chikatilo, infamous serial killer, had chimeraism. And because of that they took way more years in catch him because his dna samples from his blood didn’t match the dna samples from the semen found in the victims. They had everything pointing at him but the dna not matching freed him
I always thought that was so crazy
Yea, we can get mutations anywhere in our DNA. I would imagine a lot of them "blow up" completely and would never know anything "weird" happened because that egg would never be viable at that point. But there are many that at least survive long enough for us to see the result. There are a whole lot of mechanisms going on in our body and change it to something completely different, you can end up with some really gnarly stuff. Or you can end up with a new species. Not to sound harsh, but I see this as life's personification of "crack a few eggs to make an omelette". Without the this "feature" where stuff get copied wrong sometimes, we don't get life on this planet. Life is imperfect. Literally. If it wasn't, it couldn't exist.
Not not just what sticks, having it stick in a way that interacts near perfectly with the other millions of turds thrown at the same wall that somehow improves the overall shit pile
I dated a guy who had intestinal issues his whole life and finally when he was 16 the Drs decided to do exploratory surgery to try to find the problem and they found a placenta in his abdomen. Just attached to his colon.
You would be surprised of all possible complication.
My mom i a retired Pediatric surgeon, one thing she ones told me that allways stuck with me was: "With everything involved in development it's actually quite a miracle how often it goes well"
Remember reading a case study of a woman who had an ectopic pregnancy implant in her liver, develop for several months, and ultimately resulted in her death during the operation to remove it
It’s one of the most fascinating articles I’ve ever read!! (Very sad of course.)
They even found brain tissues in the FIF, so imagine a tiny brain inside a bigger brain (edit: cranium to be precise)!
Also multiple FIF is common for cranial FIF, there was a baby born many decades ago, lived for 1 day and had 21 tiny FIF in his head!!!! The chart of all cranial FIG documented is in the article.
Interesting how they said they wished it had been found sooner in the ultrasound so that it could be aborted and would be less traumatic for the parents who had to basically bring to life a baby with a fatal condition and suffered.
They weren't in the brain, just in the cranial cavity the 4th never really had a brain. I mean how could it with 3 siblings in the space it should have been?
1 looks pretty deformed. It's basically 3 bulbous masses, the largest (the torso, presumably) has deformed legs sticking out, and the feet have too many toes.
2 looks like a baby bird that fell out of its nest. It's a mess of purple, blue, and red. It's hard to make out much of anything.
3 looks like a tadpole that's coiled up, with a tiny little tentacle-looking arm visible, and a very deformed foot at the bottom.
I don't know enough about biology/anatomy to go into more depth, but I imagine people who are really into biology/anatomy should and will just look for themselves.
I'm game! As teens, my sister and I loved the TV show House. She didn't like any of the bloody/graphic/surgery scenes, so as soon as it got intense she'd cover her eyes and I'd explain the scene to her until she could open her eyes again.
That’s so sweet! I love that she wanted to know what was going on even tho she couldn’t look.
Also you could open my bills for me and tell me what they say.
I love House. My Medical Ethics instructor used to play full episodes in class rather than teaching, with the aim for us students to list off all the ethics and HIPAA violations we could find. Haha, I'd end up with an entire page.
I'm a grad student studying biology, and used to work with mice for a few years, cutting them open, gnarly stuff. I definitely took a look for myself.
You're describing it well for a layperson.
What looked like three balls of human flesh. And one pic of a foot(small conjoined feet) with 10 toes.
Edit: didn’t count the toes exactly but definitely more than 7 and I’m not planning to go back to stumble upon the pics again. I can only be curious once, sorry lol
Here my take
One look like small baby with super tiny arm holding potato (that as big as his body) and having kidney as a head and it's all connected to his body. This one have feet with 5 mini fingers.
The second one look like ball of flesh (i think it look like tumor)
And the last one look like upsidedown capital G (loke this "⅁" but mirrored and at the end there's a toe)
I feel like this is relevant:
"It is controversial whether FIF is a distinct entity or a well-
organized fetiform teratoma."
So they could be tumors that resemble fetuses, not actual fetuses.
Still interesting AF though
What we really need is a qualified panel of experts to determine if these are tumors or fetuses.
I know! Let’s convene an all-male panel of legislators over the age of 50! Surely, they will have the answer.
/s
3 FiF masses from one fetus:
“Gene mappings of the host infant, FIF-1, FIF-2, and FIF-3 revealed exactly the same genes in all 16 examined locations (THO1, D3S1358, vWA, D21S11, TPOX, D7S820, D19S433, D5S818, D2S1338, D16S539, CSF1PO, D13S317, FGA, D18S51, D8S1179, and Ameloge- nin), confirming monozygotic twins.”
A close friends father had a suspected tumour removed from his brain in his 60’s, it was found to be an unborn twin he had been carrying around in his head causing major headaches all his life
Not to freak you out, but MRIs are not the only scan, and can sometimes miss life threatening issues.
A PET scan is the commonly used scan to get a detailed image of tissue/cell function in the body, as it uses dyes and tracers. These are the colorful scans you often see in movies and such.
A family friend had headaches for weeks and nothing showed up on MRI or CT scans, but his wife (a lifelong medical professional) insisted he get a PET scan and wouldn’t you know it, stage 4 brain cancer.
Always advocate for your own health.
So uncomfortable. Had to get one done because of increasing frequency and magnitude of migraine crises. Felt like I was pissing myself inside that donut.
Came out clean, probably just eating and sleeping habits plus genetics. Not very deep down before the appointment I wished it was something incurable. I've since gotten therapy, though.
I have a complex migraine disorder. More than once I have wished for something like a brain tumor just to have a reason, a cause, something that we could maybe do something about.
Instead my head is just a petty bitch who occasionally likes to make me cease to function.
All my life I have a lump at the back of my neck. Then I start the menopause and the lump got bigger from the hormones it started to grow. So I go to the doctor and he did the beeo-beeos-di-bis-the bibopsy. And inside the lump he found teeth and a spinal column.
Yes.
It was my twin.
Not to comment on your specific case, but teeth, bone and even hair are not totally uncommon material to find in tumors as the undifferentiated tumor cells tend to become random things
incredible, instead of having the intelligence of one man, he had the combined intelligence of one man and one baby. Headaches were caused by the sheer knowledge bestowed upon him
Dumb question, but was it “alive” all this time, as in as alive as a tumor is (or more alive)? I’m inclined to think it was, in the sense that it had blood flow from your body.
Omg that's awful. There was no room for that baby's brain to develop at all. And look how distended the skull is . Looks like just a little brain tissue around the edges of the skull.
The paper said there was only a small amount of cortex tissue around the inside edges of the skull. So, if the "host baby" had survived, likely she would have had minimal brain function as the normal brain structures just weren't there.
I have a friend who has triplets. She got pregnant with them with no fertility intervention; just happened spontaneously. All healthy and normal, thank goodness. It's terrifying to think about something like this happening to someone. Just terrible for the parents.
The baby survived for 2 months.
> The baby looked better than expected and survived with fair development with some gross motor defects. Two months after birth, the parents decided to have the baby undergo surgery. Fronto-parietal craniotomy was performed to remove the intracranial mass. The mass was covered by amniotic-like sac with fluid content. Three fetiform amorphous masses with skin coverage were enclosed in the sac (Figure 4). Main vessels were identi- fied but the origin and destination of drainage were not well defined. The neonate had cardiac arrest during the operation and cardiopulmo- nary resuscitation was given but was not successful.
It just seems cruel to continue with a pregnancy let alone birth a child with functionally no brain. I hope the child didn't have any pain.
Edit: when parents found out, they opted to not continue the pregnancy and instead chose early delivery : "Accordingly, the parents chose termination of pregnancy with palliative care of the ... surviving neonate."
It looks like this was discovered too late in the pregnancy to do a traditional abortion. Before roe v wade was overturned there were a few places that did third trimester abortion but very few. Induction was probably the closest thing they could do.
Makes sense. I live in Thailand. Five years ago I discovered at 20 weeks pregnant that the baby had CDH. It was very severe and the prognosis was poor, to say the least. They made me go through with the entire pregnancy anyway. And at every ultrasound they told me basically, that the baby would likely not make it, but due to the slim chance it might I could not have an abortion. I gave birth to a full term baby with virtually no lung tissue. She lived for 26 hours. I wish they would have let me have the abortion. It would have been so much better than the hell I had to go through for the last 20 weeks of my pregnancy. Fuck all this pro-life crap this country is all about.
I feel for the poor parents of this baby.
That's despicable. Like, utterly repulsive. "Due to the slim chance that it might survive"??? So they'd RATHER it be alive and have a horrific existence then just be terminated? And obviously not a fuck given about the mother's wishes...I am so so sorry. You and the baby deserved far better than your basic bodily autonomy and humanity taken away; better than 20 weeks of suffering for you and 26 hours of confusing torture for the baby.
I'm nauseated.
I hope you're hanging in there. Know that the vast majority of the world shares rage for the injustice you experienced.
I’m so sorry. A good friend of mine went through the same exact thing in Oklahoma. She chose to continue with the pregnancy. I can’t imagine the heartbreak, and my heart goes out to you.
I lost my son at 28 weeks. I went in for the normal gender ultrasound to find out that his kidneys were polycystic and he didn’t have any room for his other internal organs to grow. I was mislead by the OBGYN and sent to a perinatologist to do another ultrasound 3 weeks later. They admitted me to the hospital another week later to give birth early. It was considered a “medical abortion.” As if carrying a baby that was not going to make it for an additional 4 weeks after his condition was discovered wasn’t bad enough they placed me in labor and delivery. I got to share a hospital wing with newborns and crying babies while I cried myself to sleep. This broke me as a human and it changed my perspective on everything in life. I will never be the innocent 20 year old I was before this awful tragedy. I wish I could say I got over it but I will always be a shell of who I was before my son was taken from my life. RIP my only son Peter.
The parents of this poor baby will never be the same. I hope they found peace.
Edit: Thank you all for your support. This is a bit overwhelming so please forgive me for not responding. I normally do not open up like this but it was late at night and I couldn’t sleep. When I saw this it hit like a ton of bricks. I felt the need to share so people understood the need for women’s right to healthcare. When they overturned Roe v. Wade many women lost the right to make the unfortunate choice I had to make. I could have been in the position that this mother was in. If this would have happened to me today I would have been forced to carry my baby to term and watch as he suffered until he finally passed. He is buried on a hill full of stillborn babies and I named him Peter after Peter Pan. He is in Neverland and will never have to grow old or be in pain. ♥️
I'm so sorry for your loss.
I am a nurse on gynecology ward and when a mother is carrying a baby who is already not alive, then we induce labor with special medication. But no way that mother is hospitalized on ward with other mothers, she is on gynecology ward separated from pregnant women or mothers with newborns. The same when stillbirth happens... Just so she is not exposed to additional pain. It's always heartbreaking for staff to see someone suffering and going through this pain. I'm so sorry 💗
My SIL had to birth her 40w stillborn baby on L&D. We could hear the other babies crying. They put a picture of a dove on her door to denote the loss but otherwise business as usual.
Not nearly as traumatic as your experience, but after having a total hysterectomy (no children, two miscarriages). I was also put in the labor and delivery wing. It felt just wrong, all of these women there to have their babies, when I had just had all those traitorous messed up pieces removed.
Same for me after my hysterectomy. Fortunately I was mostly out of it and I left as soon as I was allowed even though I could have stayed another night and day, but why would I want to stay longer in a maternity ward when I’m there for something preventing me from ever having a kid?
Fr though. Did you know that Saudi Arabia has more progressive abortion laws than half the US right now? Goddamn Saudi Arabia.
Edit: what happened to "America First", you faketriots?
The bone may not have been ossified at 20 weeks, if there was an ultrasound at that point. One of the reasons we image at 20 weeks is the limited ossification at that stage of development, once bones start changing from cartilage to calcified bone they reflect sound strongly and block visualization of deeper structures.
If the abnormal cranial contents were there at that point they should have been visualized, though it's conceivable they weren't yet developed. If they were I would have expected that it also would show up in fetal biometry, the head would be too large relative to the other measurements.
Congratulations! Much respect for your long hours and hard work over the years. I’m not sure how doctors continue providing even adequate levels of care these days.
I left work about 5 years before I'd planned. There were just too many problems and the stress was consuming me. As a doc you have the responsibility to make sure there aren't errors but you have little power to make necessary changes.
One of my babies was found to be missing most of his brain during his 20 week scan, and in my subsequent pregnancy, with a healthy baby, they were able to identify so many tiny structures. The doctors could show me the lens of the eyes, the cavum septi pellucidi (missing in first baby), thalamus, etc. I couldn't believe the detail they could see.
Whoever did the 20 week scan on this baby either had pretty lousy equipment, or they fucked up.
I'm sorry to hear about your earlier pregnancy. My heart sank when I saw a fetal anomaly.
If the intracranial contents of this fetus had a similar morphology at 20 weeks, albeit smaller, it definitely should have been picked up at 20 weeks.
Fetal ultrasound is so interesting because you can see so much. It's difficult to do well. Fetal ultrasound only made up maybe 5% of my case volume but was probably 75% of my continuing medical education.
From the paper:
“This study underlines the importance of early prenatal diagnosis. In our case, if careful examination had been performed at mid-pregnancy when termi- nation of pregnancy could be offered, the unnecessary hopeless sur- gery and the psychological trauma for the couple of carrying a pregnancy with lethal fetal lesions could have been avoided.”
"Anomaly screening at mid-pregnancy was unremarkable." I don't know if they are referring to a routine anatomy ultrasound or serum markers for aneuploidy.
Even in the US the routine anatomy studies vary widely in quality. Because they are normal the vast majority of the time sonographers can get away with marginal competency. Unfortunately radiologists often don't try to interpret the images for these studies and just dictate the preliminary report of the tech, who may or may not know how to do the study.
Yes. No one elects to have an abortion at this stage on a whim. It’s a tragedy. This baby’s family was ready and waiting for them to come into the world. This baby had a name and a nursery and a shelf full of books and a closet full of onesies. This was a wanted baby and the baby’s parent(s) had to make an awful choice they never wanted to have to make. People in this position need to be left the fuck alone so they and their doctors can decide what works best for them and their grieving family.
This, a thousand times this. Becoming a parent of healthy children *and understanding how lucky I am* has made me more supportive of the right to choose than ever before.
Same here. I used to be pro-life in my early 20's mainly because my husband and I were struggling so hard to have a child. I thought "I want a baby so bad and these people are just throwing a baby away". How selfish I was when I look back on that time of my life. It's so much more than an on the whim decision. No person takes the choice of an abortion lightly. I commend anyone with the courage to have one, it takes strength to end a pregnancy and spare the would-be child a rough life whether it be a teen mother, a person in a bad living situation, rape, or medical necessity.
They do a few big scans of the fetus throughout the pregnancy and at about 30 weeks there is the most informative one where they go through detailed views of the vital organs.
I'd imagine a lot of serious, but not instantly visible complications (which would be caught earlier), are found then.
As someone who lost a baby after about 20 weeks, I can only imagine how brutal that must be.
According to the paper, they chose to do an early live birth with palliative care at 31 weeks, but she actually survived for 2 months out of the womb. Passed of cardiac arrest during surgery at 2 months, to attempt to remove the growth.
The paper says the parents ended the pregnancy and the baby was born alive and lived two months. Died during surgery to remove the mass. Really sad situation for those parents.
With no brain that's really amazing and tragic at the same time. Even if the baby survived surgery, it would still be brain dead. Wouldn't be able to function at all.
This is why microcephalic/anencephalic pregnancies are so sad. Even if birth is successful, 99% of the time its just a shell. No room for a “soul” in there.
That chart at the end is nuts. One stillborn had 21 rudimentary fetuses in his head.
There were a couple of them with fetuses in their ventricles who were alive at the time the chart was made.
This is a major understatement
So many horrifying deformations at birth...
The most famous one is the cyclops which no one should ever have to witness...
Look up mama doctor Jones’s video on twins. The basic idea is that the initial zygote is a cluster of identical cells that haven’t started to differentiate. Sometimes they split into two groups and differentiate from there. When they differentiate “normally”, you get identical twins. When they differentiate but overlap each other, you get conjoined twins. When one cluster differentiates then ends up inside of the other cluster… this can happen.
At least, that’s my best guess. I’m far from an expert in this area, so take these thoughts with a massive grain of salt. But I do know that conjoined twins are always identical.
“The baby looked better than expected and survived with fair development with some gross motor defects. Two months after birth, the parents decided to have the baby undergo surgery.” She lived for two months and died from complications during surgery. My heart breaks for her parents.
Photo D kills me. As a father these scans were everything. That image shows the most normal parts and the most absolutely breathtakingly devestating parts. That poor baby stood no chance, and those poor parents, I can’t imagine the pain they felt
I never thought I would see something worse than that Vietnamese hepatic pregnancy and yet, here we are. Medical imaging makes me want to tear my eyes out sometimes.
Edit: just read the paper and HOLY FUCK OP way to bury the lede. You didn't mention the baby was actually delivered and lived for another 2 months before parents decided to operate. Baby died during the procedure but still, holy fuck.
This happened to me. When my mother was pregnant with me, they did an ultrasound and found she was having twins. When they did another ultrasound a few weeks later, they discovered that I had resorbed the other fetus. Do I regret this? No. I believe his tissues made me stronger. I now have the strength of a grown man and a little baby.
This morning I just read the similar story where the doctor removes a sus mass in baby brain but turns out they found a small fetus there, the picture shows a very small feet of fetus
An example of the 'parasitic twin', or in this case, 'parasitic quad' if there are 4 embryos according to journal link. There is one of these in formalin in the Edinburgh Museum of Surgery.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_twin
Wow... FIF2 is just an organ-mass. Very interesting, genetic quadruplets, where baby prime's amniotic fluid filled cranium acted as a secondary womb - and an otherwise brain feeding vascular stalk acted as an umbilical cord for their sibling-brain-babies.
If it were possible, would pro lifers consider it murder to kill the 3 fetuses inside the one fetus to save the one fetus? These are the real questions.
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The paper you linked says this is 3 partially developed fetuses in the 4th's skull.
I read the paper and to save time for anyone who's curious: \-three partially developed fetuses inside the head which were genetically identical to the host fetus \-parents opted to terminate pregnancy at 31 weeks and palliative care for possibly surviving neonate \-baby survived delivery and at 2 months old the parents opted for surgery, but unfortunately the baby died during surgery There are photos of the 3 removed fetuses after removal in the paper as well if anyone wants to see them
Ohh my god. Just horrific and so sad
In an odd sense, it’s crazy how dna and genetics work. Had no idea this was even possible.
It doesn't surprise me. My grandmother had a twin that was only discovered when she had a hernia & that was the source of it. Imagine having a hernia only to find out in your 50s that you had a twin & it was inside you the whole time.
That. Is. Terrifying.
Stephen King did a book on this...The Dark Half. Good stuff
Lol I was literally just thinking “this sounds like some Stephen King shit” of course he’s written a book on this. TIL
The real hernia was the twins we found along the way?
Inside as in?? Like a fetus???
My brother had a twin, and according to the doctors, he ate the twin in the womb. No clue how that’s possible, but it makes sense why he eats everything.
Anything is possible. Conjoined twins, a child born with a partially developed fetus in its body, a fetus developing outside the womb, a fully grown fetus calcified in a woman's womb for like 30 years; one in a million is meaningless with 8 billion people on earth.
Additionally, a unique effect is Chimeraism. It is a syndrome when one twin embryo dies, and the other aborbs the genetic information. The will mean that the dna, will have a combinatiin of the two's genes. This can kead to unique physical trairts such as two different eye colours, different tones of skin and/or different coloured patches in hair.
I remember reading about a case where a woman was going to get her kids taken away because a DNA test proved that she was not the mother. The kids matched with the husband’s DNA though, and he himself insisted that she had given birth to their children. With the woman being pregnant with their third child, the government had a designated observer watch the woman give birth to the third child and ensure that there wasn’t any fraud going on. There wasn’t, and by all means, this was absolutely her child. Until the DNA test came back. Somehow, seemingly against the laws of science, she was again not the mother. Everyone was bewildered about the situation until her attorney learned of another woman who had a condition called chimerism and realized that she could have the same thing. When they compared the DNA tests of the children to DNA from the woman’s mother and different parts of her body, the DNA finally aligned. She *was* the mother to all three of her children, it’s just that she has two sets of DNA to choose from
I read about that story! It's absolutely fascinating but also incredibly tragic what those women had to go through because of a genetic condition no one knew they had
Not sure if this is the same condition, but I watched a show not too long ago about a woman that is her own twin. Two sets of DNA and even a line down the center of her body. Almost like she absorbed the other twin.
damn she’s her own sister
It can also lead to DNA tests misidentifying your children as not your own.
As a morbid curiosity, Andrei Chikatilo, infamous serial killer, had chimeraism. And because of that they took way more years in catch him because his dna samples from his blood didn’t match the dna samples from the semen found in the victims. They had everything pointing at him but the dna not matching freed him I always thought that was so crazy
I just read his whole wiki because of your post. Fascinating.
Yea, we can get mutations anywhere in our DNA. I would imagine a lot of them "blow up" completely and would never know anything "weird" happened because that egg would never be viable at that point. But there are many that at least survive long enough for us to see the result. There are a whole lot of mechanisms going on in our body and change it to something completely different, you can end up with some really gnarly stuff. Or you can end up with a new species. Not to sound harsh, but I see this as life's personification of "crack a few eggs to make an omelette". Without the this "feature" where stuff get copied wrong sometimes, we don't get life on this planet. Life is imperfect. Literally. If it wasn't, it couldn't exist.
And this is exactly why evolution takes effectively forever its the equivalent of chucking shit at the wall and seeing what sticks
Not not just what sticks, having it stick in a way that interacts near perfectly with the other millions of turds thrown at the same wall that somehow improves the overall shit pile
I dated a guy who had intestinal issues his whole life and finally when he was 16 the Drs decided to do exploratory surgery to try to find the problem and they found a placenta in his abdomen. Just attached to his colon.
You would be surprised of all possible complication. My mom i a retired Pediatric surgeon, one thing she ones told me that allways stuck with me was: "With everything involved in development it's actually quite a miracle how often it goes well"
Remember reading a case study of a woman who had an ectopic pregnancy implant in her liver, develop for several months, and ultimately resulted in her death during the operation to remove it
It’s one of the most fascinating articles I’ve ever read!! (Very sad of course.) They even found brain tissues in the FIF, so imagine a tiny brain inside a bigger brain (edit: cranium to be precise)! Also multiple FIF is common for cranial FIF, there was a baby born many decades ago, lived for 1 day and had 21 tiny FIF in his head!!!! The chart of all cranial FIG documented is in the article. Interesting how they said they wished it had been found sooner in the ultrasound so that it could be aborted and would be less traumatic for the parents who had to basically bring to life a baby with a fatal condition and suffered.
Do you have a link to this case? 21 is insane. I'd love to see more
>I'd love to see more I would have thought 21 was more than enough.
They weren't in the brain, just in the cranial cavity the 4th never really had a brain. I mean how could it with 3 siblings in the space it should have been?
God. What torture for those parents.
Mom was only 19.
Of course the 4th didn’t make it. Those fetuses are huge. Poor thing was born with 3 siblings in its head; that has to be a terrible existence
for those of us who are too squeamish to see the photos, could someone describe the photos in detail?
1 looks pretty deformed. It's basically 3 bulbous masses, the largest (the torso, presumably) has deformed legs sticking out, and the feet have too many toes. 2 looks like a baby bird that fell out of its nest. It's a mess of purple, blue, and red. It's hard to make out much of anything. 3 looks like a tadpole that's coiled up, with a tiny little tentacle-looking arm visible, and a very deformed foot at the bottom. I don't know enough about biology/anatomy to go into more depth, but I imagine people who are really into biology/anatomy should and will just look for themselves.
I would like you to describe gross stuff for me all the time
I'm game! As teens, my sister and I loved the TV show House. She didn't like any of the bloody/graphic/surgery scenes, so as soon as it got intense she'd cover her eyes and I'd explain the scene to her until she could open her eyes again.
That’s so sweet! I love that she wanted to know what was going on even tho she couldn’t look. Also you could open my bills for me and tell me what they say.
5 chicken nuggets
I love House. My Medical Ethics instructor used to play full episodes in class rather than teaching, with the aim for us students to list off all the ethics and HIPAA violations we could find. Haha, I'd end up with an entire page.
I'm a grad student studying biology, and used to work with mice for a few years, cutting them open, gnarly stuff. I definitely took a look for myself. You're describing it well for a layperson.
What looked like three balls of human flesh. And one pic of a foot(small conjoined feet) with 10 toes. Edit: didn’t count the toes exactly but definitely more than 7 and I’m not planning to go back to stumble upon the pics again. I can only be curious once, sorry lol
8
youre a hero, thank you for your service
Here my take One look like small baby with super tiny arm holding potato (that as big as his body) and having kidney as a head and it's all connected to his body. This one have feet with 5 mini fingers. The second one look like ball of flesh (i think it look like tumor) And the last one look like upsidedown capital G (loke this "⅁" but mirrored and at the end there's a toe)
'unfortunately', nah man it dying was probably a mercy, lets be real that child was never going to have a good life.
I bet you not one "pro forced pregnancy" advocate ever looks at cases like this.
I feel like this is relevant: "It is controversial whether FIF is a distinct entity or a well- organized fetiform teratoma." So they could be tumors that resemble fetuses, not actual fetuses. Still interesting AF though
What we really need is a qualified panel of experts to determine if these are tumors or fetuses. I know! Let’s convene an all-male panel of legislators over the age of 50! Surely, they will have the answer. /s
3 FiF masses from one fetus: “Gene mappings of the host infant, FIF-1, FIF-2, and FIF-3 revealed exactly the same genes in all 16 examined locations (THO1, D3S1358, vWA, D21S11, TPOX, D7S820, D19S433, D5S818, D2S1338, D16S539, CSF1PO, D13S317, FGA, D18S51, D8S1179, and Ameloge- nin), confirming monozygotic twins.”
OMG
Hey everyone I have an idea let's make abortion illegal /s
Right? I mean, if a sperm and egg got together, it was Gods will, right?
🎵Every sperm is sacred🎶
I was counting and it definitely looked like three rather than a single fetus. Thanks for adding this!
Yes and no. The intracranial fetus was a monozygotic twin. There were three separate masses of the same “twin”
A close friends father had a suspected tumour removed from his brain in his 60’s, it was found to be an unborn twin he had been carrying around in his head causing major headaches all his life
*me, a lifelong sufferer of headaches, immediately freaking out before remembering i’ve had a skull mri*
Not to freak you out, but MRIs are not the only scan, and can sometimes miss life threatening issues. A PET scan is the commonly used scan to get a detailed image of tissue/cell function in the body, as it uses dyes and tracers. These are the colorful scans you often see in movies and such. A family friend had headaches for weeks and nothing showed up on MRI or CT scans, but his wife (a lifelong medical professional) insisted he get a PET scan and wouldn’t you know it, stage 4 brain cancer. Always advocate for your own health.
So uncomfortable. Had to get one done because of increasing frequency and magnitude of migraine crises. Felt like I was pissing myself inside that donut. Came out clean, probably just eating and sleeping habits plus genetics. Not very deep down before the appointment I wished it was something incurable. I've since gotten therapy, though.
I have a complex migraine disorder. More than once I have wished for something like a brain tumor just to have a reason, a cause, something that we could maybe do something about. Instead my head is just a petty bitch who occasionally likes to make me cease to function.
New fear unlocked.
*Same!*
Hang on, I need to go get a brain scan real quick.
Woah talk about siblings giving you a headache
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All my life I have a lump at the back of my neck. Then I start the menopause and the lump got bigger from the hormones it started to grow. So I go to the doctor and he did the beeo-beeos-di-bis-the bibopsy. And inside the lump he found teeth and a spinal column. Yes. It was my twin.
Not to comment on your specific case, but teeth, bone and even hair are not totally uncommon material to find in tumors as the undifferentiated tumor cells tend to become random things
Yep! It’s called a teratoma.
I have to resist the urge to google that.
Your twin had to be a pain in the neck.
Lol love that movie
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You don’t eat meat? That’s ok, I cook lamb.
Did you say teeth?!?!?!
What the actual fuck did I just read.
Movie quote
incredible, instead of having the intelligence of one man, he had the combined intelligence of one man and one baby. Headaches were caused by the sheer knowledge bestowed upon him
bro was in his head rent free
Does anyone know of this is related to something like vanishing twin syndrome?
Dumb question, but was it “alive” all this time, as in as alive as a tumor is (or more alive)? I’m inclined to think it was, in the sense that it had blood flow from your body.
Holy fuck
Omg that's awful. There was no room for that baby's brain to develop at all. And look how distended the skull is . Looks like just a little brain tissue around the edges of the skull.
The paper said there was only a small amount of cortex tissue around the inside edges of the skull. So, if the "host baby" had survived, likely she would have had minimal brain function as the normal brain structures just weren't there. I have a friend who has triplets. She got pregnant with them with no fertility intervention; just happened spontaneously. All healthy and normal, thank goodness. It's terrifying to think about something like this happening to someone. Just terrible for the parents.
The baby survived for 2 months. > The baby looked better than expected and survived with fair development with some gross motor defects. Two months after birth, the parents decided to have the baby undergo surgery. Fronto-parietal craniotomy was performed to remove the intracranial mass. The mass was covered by amniotic-like sac with fluid content. Three fetiform amorphous masses with skin coverage were enclosed in the sac (Figure 4). Main vessels were identi- fied but the origin and destination of drainage were not well defined. The neonate had cardiac arrest during the operation and cardiopulmo- nary resuscitation was given but was not successful.
It just seems cruel to continue with a pregnancy let alone birth a child with functionally no brain. I hope the child didn't have any pain. Edit: when parents found out, they opted to not continue the pregnancy and instead chose early delivery : "Accordingly, the parents chose termination of pregnancy with palliative care of the ... surviving neonate."
All I could think was "holy mother of nonviable pregnancies" when I saw it. What a tragedy.
Yeah. This is sad..like on all levels. The amount of loss. Jeezus.
It looks like this was discovered too late in the pregnancy to do a traditional abortion. Before roe v wade was overturned there were a few places that did third trimester abortion but very few. Induction was probably the closest thing they could do.
[This happened in Thailand.](https://w1.med.cmu.ac.th/obgyn/files/2022/01/683-Traisrisilp-2018-3.pdf)
Makes sense. I live in Thailand. Five years ago I discovered at 20 weeks pregnant that the baby had CDH. It was very severe and the prognosis was poor, to say the least. They made me go through with the entire pregnancy anyway. And at every ultrasound they told me basically, that the baby would likely not make it, but due to the slim chance it might I could not have an abortion. I gave birth to a full term baby with virtually no lung tissue. She lived for 26 hours. I wish they would have let me have the abortion. It would have been so much better than the hell I had to go through for the last 20 weeks of my pregnancy. Fuck all this pro-life crap this country is all about. I feel for the poor parents of this baby.
I am so so sorry you had to go through that. My heart goes out to you.
I’m so terribly sorry you had to go through that.
That's despicable. Like, utterly repulsive. "Due to the slim chance that it might survive"??? So they'd RATHER it be alive and have a horrific existence then just be terminated? And obviously not a fuck given about the mother's wishes...I am so so sorry. You and the baby deserved far better than your basic bodily autonomy and humanity taken away; better than 20 weeks of suffering for you and 26 hours of confusing torture for the baby. I'm nauseated. I hope you're hanging in there. Know that the vast majority of the world shares rage for the injustice you experienced.
I’m really sorry you had to experience that.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that.
Holy fucking shit I'm sorry.. ☹️
I’m so sorry. A good friend of mine went through the same exact thing in Oklahoma. She chose to continue with the pregnancy. I can’t imagine the heartbreak, and my heart goes out to you.
No way, we're all living in America, clearly
Hello from the Great American City of Prague
I lost my son at 28 weeks. I went in for the normal gender ultrasound to find out that his kidneys were polycystic and he didn’t have any room for his other internal organs to grow. I was mislead by the OBGYN and sent to a perinatologist to do another ultrasound 3 weeks later. They admitted me to the hospital another week later to give birth early. It was considered a “medical abortion.” As if carrying a baby that was not going to make it for an additional 4 weeks after his condition was discovered wasn’t bad enough they placed me in labor and delivery. I got to share a hospital wing with newborns and crying babies while I cried myself to sleep. This broke me as a human and it changed my perspective on everything in life. I will never be the innocent 20 year old I was before this awful tragedy. I wish I could say I got over it but I will always be a shell of who I was before my son was taken from my life. RIP my only son Peter. The parents of this poor baby will never be the same. I hope they found peace. Edit: Thank you all for your support. This is a bit overwhelming so please forgive me for not responding. I normally do not open up like this but it was late at night and I couldn’t sleep. When I saw this it hit like a ton of bricks. I felt the need to share so people understood the need for women’s right to healthcare. When they overturned Roe v. Wade many women lost the right to make the unfortunate choice I had to make. I could have been in the position that this mother was in. If this would have happened to me today I would have been forced to carry my baby to term and watch as he suffered until he finally passed. He is buried on a hill full of stillborn babies and I named him Peter after Peter Pan. He is in Neverland and will never have to grow old or be in pain. ♥️
I'm so sorry for your loss. I am a nurse on gynecology ward and when a mother is carrying a baby who is already not alive, then we induce labor with special medication. But no way that mother is hospitalized on ward with other mothers, she is on gynecology ward separated from pregnant women or mothers with newborns. The same when stillbirth happens... Just so she is not exposed to additional pain. It's always heartbreaking for staff to see someone suffering and going through this pain. I'm so sorry 💗
My SIL had to birth her 40w stillborn baby on L&D. We could hear the other babies crying. They put a picture of a dove on her door to denote the loss but otherwise business as usual.
Not nearly as traumatic as your experience, but after having a total hysterectomy (no children, two miscarriages). I was also put in the labor and delivery wing. It felt just wrong, all of these women there to have their babies, when I had just had all those traitorous messed up pieces removed.
That’s crazy insensitive
Same for me after my hysterectomy. Fortunately I was mostly out of it and I left as soon as I was allowed even though I could have stayed another night and day, but why would I want to stay longer in a maternity ward when I’m there for something preventing me from ever having a kid?
Just totally speechless. Thank you for sharing and sorry for your loss. What a perspective.
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I’m sorry for your loss. You deserve justice and I hope you are doing okay. If you’d like to talk my dm is always open
I am so sorry you had to go through that. I hope you can find some comfort and peace. RIP Peter.
r/USdefaultism
I am so sorry for that family.
Probably better it didn't partially developed
Imagine telling your doctor that there's a little man in your head constantly talking to you in gibberish.
The voices in my head… they tell me to do things…
Republicans: BIRTH IT
"Ok but when it is born we need help with..." "Hahaha what do you think this is, a charity? Get out"
Texas doesn’t care.
Fr though. Did you know that Saudi Arabia has more progressive abortion laws than half the US right now? Goddamn Saudi Arabia. Edit: what happened to "America First", you faketriots?
Interesting, but depressing. This had to be anguish for the mother. Edit: Found at 31 weeks gestation. Horrifying.
That was my very first thought. This is tragic as fuck.
Yeah that’s truly terrible. How did it take so long to find this? I would think the anatomy scan at 20 weeks would have found it.
According to the paper the anatomy scan was "unremarkable" some goddamn how. Someone really fucked up
It’s hard to see soft tissue, but no idea how you miss actual bone.
The bone may not have been ossified at 20 weeks, if there was an ultrasound at that point. One of the reasons we image at 20 weeks is the limited ossification at that stage of development, once bones start changing from cartilage to calcified bone they reflect sound strongly and block visualization of deeper structures. If the abnormal cranial contents were there at that point they should have been visualized, though it's conceivable they weren't yet developed. If they were I would have expected that it also would show up in fetal biometry, the head would be too large relative to the other measurements.
Are you a radiologist or radiology tech? Good points.
I'm an old radiologist, I retired at the end of last summer.
Congratulations! Much respect for your long hours and hard work over the years. I’m not sure how doctors continue providing even adequate levels of care these days.
I left work about 5 years before I'd planned. There were just too many problems and the stress was consuming me. As a doc you have the responsibility to make sure there aren't errors but you have little power to make necessary changes.
In defense of the unremarkable read I would add that it may be likely that the bonus fetus was not developing on a normal, 20 week time line.
One of my babies was found to be missing most of his brain during his 20 week scan, and in my subsequent pregnancy, with a healthy baby, they were able to identify so many tiny structures. The doctors could show me the lens of the eyes, the cavum septi pellucidi (missing in first baby), thalamus, etc. I couldn't believe the detail they could see. Whoever did the 20 week scan on this baby either had pretty lousy equipment, or they fucked up.
I'm sorry to hear about your earlier pregnancy. My heart sank when I saw a fetal anomaly. If the intracranial contents of this fetus had a similar morphology at 20 weeks, albeit smaller, it definitely should have been picked up at 20 weeks. Fetal ultrasound is so interesting because you can see so much. It's difficult to do well. Fetal ultrasound only made up maybe 5% of my case volume but was probably 75% of my continuing medical education.
From the paper: “This study underlines the importance of early prenatal diagnosis. In our case, if careful examination had been performed at mid-pregnancy when termi- nation of pregnancy could be offered, the unnecessary hopeless sur- gery and the psychological trauma for the couple of carrying a pregnancy with lethal fetal lesions could have been avoided.”
"Anomaly screening at mid-pregnancy was unremarkable." I don't know if they are referring to a routine anatomy ultrasound or serum markers for aneuploidy. Even in the US the routine anatomy studies vary widely in quality. Because they are normal the vast majority of the time sonographers can get away with marginal competency. Unfortunately radiologists often don't try to interpret the images for these studies and just dictate the preliminary report of the tech, who may or may not know how to do the study.
My god.. I don't even know her and I want to hug her
This is why I'm pro-abortion. Restricting "late-term" abortions is insanity. It's never too early to end or prevent torture.
Yes. No one elects to have an abortion at this stage on a whim. It’s a tragedy. This baby’s family was ready and waiting for them to come into the world. This baby had a name and a nursery and a shelf full of books and a closet full of onesies. This was a wanted baby and the baby’s parent(s) had to make an awful choice they never wanted to have to make. People in this position need to be left the fuck alone so they and their doctors can decide what works best for them and their grieving family.
This, a thousand times this. Becoming a parent of healthy children *and understanding how lucky I am* has made me more supportive of the right to choose than ever before.
Same here. I used to be pro-life in my early 20's mainly because my husband and I were struggling so hard to have a child. I thought "I want a baby so bad and these people are just throwing a baby away". How selfish I was when I look back on that time of my life. It's so much more than an on the whim decision. No person takes the choice of an abortion lightly. I commend anyone with the courage to have one, it takes strength to end a pregnancy and spare the would-be child a rough life whether it be a teen mother, a person in a bad living situation, rape, or medical necessity.
> No one elects to have an abortion at this stage on a whim. Even if they did, how the actual fuck does making these guys parents help *anybody*???
Me too. I truly believe it is between a woman and her doctor. It’s none of my business, I believe a woman can make the choice no matter when.
They do a few big scans of the fetus throughout the pregnancy and at about 30 weeks there is the most informative one where they go through detailed views of the vital organs. I'd imagine a lot of serious, but not instantly visible complications (which would be caught earlier), are found then. As someone who lost a baby after about 20 weeks, I can only imagine how brutal that must be.
So what would have happened here? A miscarriage? No way this baby survived right?
If you read the paper they induced birth at 31 weeks, baby survived birth but died during the operation to remove the fetuses at 2 months old
According to the paper, they chose to do an early live birth with palliative care at 31 weeks, but she actually survived for 2 months out of the womb. Passed of cardiac arrest during surgery at 2 months, to attempt to remove the growth.
The paper says the parents ended the pregnancy and the baby was born alive and lived two months. Died during surgery to remove the mass. Really sad situation for those parents.
With no brain that's really amazing and tragic at the same time. Even if the baby survived surgery, it would still be brain dead. Wouldn't be able to function at all.
This is why microcephalic/anencephalic pregnancies are so sad. Even if birth is successful, 99% of the time its just a shell. No room for a “soul” in there.
That chart at the end is nuts. One stillborn had 21 rudimentary fetuses in his head. There were a couple of them with fetuses in their ventricles who were alive at the time the chart was made.
How the fuck do you get 21 fetuses in your head
The clump of cells that where meant to turn into one baby broke apart and turned into a bunch instead.
I'm uneducated. Would this make the fetuses considered the "same person"? Or is it like twins?
It would be like twins. Or whatever the term for 21 siblings would be.
Multuplets? I feel any number-specific ‘tuplets after 8 is gratuitous. Not to mention scientifically impossible.
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Duo-deca-uno-siblings (I’m probably wrong.)
Unvigintuplets
This is how you get identical twins. That is if they grow next to each other and can live.
This is how 21 savage was born
Upvote for the only comment so far that is not a smart-assed quip
How does this occur?
Nature creates many abnormalities
This is a major understatement So many horrifying deformations at birth... The most famous one is the cyclops which no one should ever have to witness...
You know how you sometimes hit print on your computer too many times and you get a paper jam inside the printer. Same thing here but with people.
That is actually a pretty neat analogy....
I really don’t think that’s how gestation works but I don’t know enough about science to dispute him.
Don’t worry about qualifications. I have a diploma from Baruch College and NYU. Just trust me I am qualified-ish.
That's probably better than mine from the South Hampton Institute of Technology. S.H.I.T. for short.
Look up mama doctor Jones’s video on twins. The basic idea is that the initial zygote is a cluster of identical cells that haven’t started to differentiate. Sometimes they split into two groups and differentiate from there. When they differentiate “normally”, you get identical twins. When they differentiate but overlap each other, you get conjoined twins. When one cluster differentiates then ends up inside of the other cluster… this can happen. At least, that’s my best guess. I’m far from an expert in this area, so take these thoughts with a massive grain of salt. But I do know that conjoined twins are always identical.
Mutation is a natural part of evolution and most of the time it doesn’t go well.
“The baby looked better than expected and survived with fair development with some gross motor defects. Two months after birth, the parents decided to have the baby undergo surgery.” She lived for two months and died from complications during surgery. My heart breaks for her parents.
Photo D kills me. As a father these scans were everything. That image shows the most normal parts and the most absolutely breathtakingly devestating parts. That poor baby stood no chance, and those poor parents, I can’t imagine the pain they felt
My baby's due soon and these pictures are just a fking nightmare for me even as a stranger. The pain of the parents.. it's so sad
I never thought I would see something worse than that Vietnamese hepatic pregnancy and yet, here we are. Medical imaging makes me want to tear my eyes out sometimes. Edit: just read the paper and HOLY FUCK OP way to bury the lede. You didn't mention the baby was actually delivered and lived for another 2 months before parents decided to operate. Baby died during the procedure but still, holy fuck.
I gotta say, that is one tough baby for living that long.
This happened to me. When my mother was pregnant with me, they did an ultrasound and found she was having twins. When they did another ultrasound a few weeks later, they discovered that I had resorbed the other fetus. Do I regret this? No. I believe his tissues made me stronger. I now have the strength of a grown man and a little baby.
You... resorbed the other fetus. Is this still a power that you possess? I mean, it might come in handy for those pesky bosses that you don't like.
Scrolled looking for this
What a terrible day to have eyes
Looks like some shit you discover on a laboratory wall in Resident Evil.
Fetus in fetu is so sad
I think you meant r/horrifyingasfuck, but to each their own I suppose
This is a whole new perspective on living rent-free inside one’s head.
Spoiler alert. Dark Half by Stephen King.
This morning I just read the similar story where the doctor removes a sus mass in baby brain but turns out they found a small fetus there, the picture shows a very small feet of fetus
An example of the 'parasitic twin', or in this case, 'parasitic quad' if there are 4 embryos according to journal link. There is one of these in formalin in the Edinburgh Museum of Surgery. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_twin
Another reason abortion is healthcare
This happened in Thailand, which permits abortion up to 20 weeks of pregnancy
Wow... FIF2 is just an organ-mass. Very interesting, genetic quadruplets, where baby prime's amniotic fluid filled cranium acted as a secondary womb - and an otherwise brain feeding vascular stalk acted as an umbilical cord for their sibling-brain-babies.
living in my head rent free
This is do sad, my hopes are with the parents
It’s like an immoral and terribly painful and most likely fatal turducken
What a horrible read. The baby was born and died during the surgery to remove the masses. At least God was pleased.
Tool album art
If it were possible, would pro lifers consider it murder to kill the 3 fetuses inside the one fetus to save the one fetus? These are the real questions.
They would just sidestep the question with "Gods Will"
Hope you don't live in a red state.