They look relieved that their daughter may have a normal life after the surgery but they are not very sure they will be able to convince people back home that they did the right thing in getting her operated.
“Since the time she was born, the villagers believed that she was the Goddess because of her eight limbs and the fact that she was born on Deepavali. So when we told them that we are going to Bangalore to have her operated they told us to leave her alone.
They want to build a temple for her,” said Shambhu, Lakshmi’s father. A daily wage worker at Arharia, in Bihar, with an average earning of Rs 30-35 per day, Shambhu, and his wife Poonam also believe that their daughter is the Goddess incarnate.
“But it’s difficult to manage her. She can’t walk because of the conjoined twin. She drags herself on the ground and as a result she has a huge wound. She needs two people to handle her because she can’t even attend nature’s call on her own. We are very poor and if I don’t go to work, I will not be able to feed my family. We sought medical help but doctors in the village said they couldn’t do anything,” he added.
Shambhu took Lakshmi to a hospital in Delhi but even there he didn’t get any help. During the trip, he stayed in Noida, UP, with his relative, where Lakshmi was spotted by a circus group, who approached her parents and asked them to sell her to them for a few thousand rupees. However a local newspaper in Noida carried a small story on the child and this was conveyed to Dr Sharan Patil, orthopaedic surgeon and chairman, Sparsh Hospital, Bangalore.
In September Dr Sharan rushed to the village in Ahraria — a small hamlet of 150 houses. He met Lakshmi there and convinced her parents that he may be able to help their child and give her a new lease of life.
Lakshmi arrived in Bangalore with her parents on October 3. Her wound was infected and she was highly anaemic. The team of doctors working on her case, helped her. Her wound is healed and her nutritional and haemoglobin level has improved. “She is now ready for the operation,” said Dr Patil.
OPERATION TODAY
Two-year-old Lakshmi is an Ischiopagus conjoined twin (Ischio means pelvic bone and Pagus means fused). She is conjoined with her headless twin at the pelvis. Two pairs of arms and legs have formed at either end of two adjoining torsos, creating a child with eight limbs. Lakshmi has one kidney and the other kidney is in the twin’s body. Her spinal chord runs through the other torso. She has two excretory passages.
She will be operated upon by a team of surgeons and specialists at Sparsh Hospital, Bangalore on Tuesday. “The greatest challenge before us is to remove the extraneous parts and move all the structures up into Lakshmi without causing any harm to the vital organs" said Dr Sharan Patil, orthopaedic surgeon, Sparsh Hospital.
